


The Habits of a Broken Clock

by blasthisass



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Doctor Who, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasthisass/pseuds/blasthisass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Hummel has a strange, inexplicable obsession with time, but he never have imagined that such an insignificant thing as a pocket watch and a mysterious boy with a blue box would change his life forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue, or on the Nature of Stars

“The universe is dying, Doctor.”

He didn’t look up at the speaker standing at the window, his eyes trained instead on the model of the universe, by no means all-encompassing, glittering and fluid before him. His voice, when he spoke, was more somber and serious than she’d ever heard it, than she’d ever imagined it could be. It was the voice of a man that had finally allowed himself to be defeated by loss.

“The universe threatened to disappear before,” he replied, his eyes searching the model for signs of decay. “I’ll fix it. I’ve always had to fix it, haven’t I? No matter the cost. So you may be rest assured that I shall not fall to the wayside in my _duties_.” The last word was spoken with every ounce of bitterness she was sure he possessed.

She didn’t reply, watching his ancient eyes poring over the model at the center of her stately chambers. Her eyes flickered to the real stars outside before she spoke again.

“You shan’t find anything there,” she finally murmured. He looked up to see her looking over her shoulder at him. He met her dark eyes momentarily before she turned her face away from him again, back to the stars. Her eyes took in the glittering nebulas as they cast their light on the majestic, old-Earthly space station, each part illuminated in slow rotation.

She had only to wait a fraction of a moment before she heard the soft click of his boots and felt his shoulder brush against a stray ringlet of her raven hair as he came to stand beside her, directing his own gaze upward.

“The universe is dying,” she repeated, turning to look at his profile. He’d regenerated since she’d last seen him, since the very day that had brought bitterness into his voice and though he certainly looked younger than he ever had, almost like a schoolboy, his sorrow was letting his age show. “You say you’ve seen it before, but you have not. No one creature, no one evil motive causes this, Doctor, but be warned that others will perhaps try to take advantage of it,” With this she cast an uneasy glance behind her to the velvet curtains hanging in the corner of the room, “use this decay for their own benefit. But I tell you now that this time the universe dies of its own accord, for no reason but that it has seen things that force it to lose the will of its own existence. It does not need a hero, Doctor.”

“Then it needs a healer. You do not dispute me.”

“You are one and the same,” she continued softly, “You and this universe. You cannot see it because you are caught in the eye of the storm. The stars are fading, Doctor,” she murmured and he seemed to start, leaning forward until his face was pressed against the cold glass, brow furrowed, as though he couldn’t recognize the difference between the skies of yesteryears and those of that very moment. “You cannot fix this, Doctor.”

For the first time since he’d answered her plea to come, the Doctor turned his face away from the world and looked straight at his summoner, taking her in fully. Taking in the small crown that was almost hidden in the mess of dark curls atop her head, her noble eyes reflecting the red of her gown as she observed him with calm sincerity. It was the first time he saw the slightest bit of pity in her eyes, but none of the usual panic that came from those who were calling for aid.

“Why did you call me here, Awena?” he questioned, his eyes boring into her, giving her the urge to will them away with as much passion as she had willed them to her only moments before.

“Because you have the unfortunate habit of avoiding those fateful events that are displeasing to you,” the majestic queen replied, for gentleness’s sake leaving the specific nouns on the tip of her tongue unspoken. “And there will come a time, Time Lord, when you will come across a fixed figure that you will, as is your nature, wish to steal from the universe, from his own fate. And you must be aware that you must not, under any circumstances, do so. Let things play out as they should, Doctor, for your own sake if no one else’s.”

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but froze when a pale, cool hand was laid flat on his cheek.

Awena smiled sadly into the ancient eyes of the being before her. “This universe doesn’t need a hero, Doctor, that would sacrifice all in order to save it. Not this time. I don’t even think it needs a healer. It needs a new soul and without it all will wither and disappear. . . . You look doubtful,” she said after a pause when the Doctor remained silent, his narrowed eyes attempting to read the inner workings of her heart, to discern that which she appeared to not be telling him.

“You said a fixed figure,” the Doctor said slowly, watching her. “There’s no such thing. There are fixed points, fixed events. But not people.”

“You’ve traveled with one.”

“You imply a figure fixed on its own accord. That I say is an impossibility.”

“Oh, Doctor,” she sighed, “Haven’t you lived through enough to know that nothing is impossible?”

His eyes hardened, reading the allusion in her voice and he jerked himself out of her touch, turning his face back toward the ever-glowing nebulas. His eyes glistened strangely and the calmness of his breaths was clearly forced.

Awena watched him in silence, his thoughts more of a mystery to her than ever before. She started as he turned suddenly and with three swifts strides made his way back across the room to his blue box.

“Doctor?” she called before he could disappear again. Because once he was gone there was no predicting when, if ever, he would return, or if she should be in a position to communicate with him even if he did. “You have known me for a long time and I have never failed to warn you of your fate. I do not mean to be blunt, but failure to heed to my warnings has put you in this position.” His shoulders stiffened and she prayed that he did not turn around, for the she could not handle the blaze that she knew was present in his gaze. “Some fates are not meant to be changed. You’ll understand when you finally see the stars fading.”  


  
***

  
On April 5, 1999, a small boy burrowed further into what had just that morning still been his mother’s pillow. He wrapped his arms around it as tightly as he could and cried himself to sleep while his father, sitting on the edge of the bed he no longer had to share, ran what he hoped was a comforting hand through his son’s silk-soft brown locks.

Outside the window, clouds gathered and the rain in them prepared to sprinkle down over the quiet town of Lima, Ohio. Beyond the clouds, the sky was dotted with stars and, had it been fully cloudless, the most careful of observers would have discerned the tiniest of stars, old and distant, glow brightly for a mere instant before flickering out. 


	2. Prologue, or on the Nature of Stars

Blaine Anderson had an ancient, beautifully carved pocket watch that he said that he’d received from his grandfather and, for some odd reason, Kurt was absolutely obsessed with it.  
  
Kurt Hummel’s obsession with fashion accessories was certainly no mysterious thing and it had undoubtedly grown since he’d transferred to Dalton. In the absence of clothing himself in the latest fashions, he had to make due with subtly accessorizing and the creativity of the matter made preparation for classes almost as exciting as when he’d had a full closet of clothes from which to choose from.  
  
So, ordinarily, his appreciation for the old-fashioned accessory would not to have been something to linger over. He ought to have expressed his appreciation for Blaine’s sense of taste and moved on. He most certainly did the former. He could not, however, bring himself to complete the latter.  
  
Perhaps the prime factor was because of Blaine. Because it appeared to be an inherent part of him and Kurt was, little by little, falling for Blaine. There was certainly no denying the fact that the perfect, polite boy had wormed his way into Kurt’s heart, even in the short amount of time that they’d known each other. But, oddly enough, throughout the entire time that they’d been in each other’s company, he had yet to see the boy without the watch. And he had no explanation for the reason behind it, but he felt that if Blaine ever arrived at Dalton without it, Kurt would be irrevocably bothered by it.  
  
Blaine would joke, his eyes twinkling brightly, about a dream that he’d had (among many of his other wild and fascinating ones) that the watch wasn’t really a watch, but that it held and protected his own true identity. His smile would be bright, as though pleased by the extended imagination produced by his subconscious, but something about the phrase made Kurt freeze. He didn’t know if it was on account of the strange sparkle in Blaine’s eyes, as though he truly had some sort of secret to that regard hiding at the back of his mind, or because of the whispers, surely imagined, that in the midst of total silence would call to him from the small mechanical device.  
  
Or maybe it was because of those rare moments when Blaine fell from his sunshine-like high. Those small moments when there was a flash of unexplainable age and sorrow in his eyes, during which his hand would disappear into his pocket and would undoubtedly be seeking comfort in the touch of the old time-keeper.

  
***

  
“Which is why I’m asking to enlist the Warblers to help serenade this individual. In song . . . of campus.”  
  
This was, surprisingly, one of those moments. The tumult that broke out after this announcement was actually rather astounding and Kurt, in the midst of shifting uncomfortably in his seat, just barely caught the strange flash in Blaine’s eyes before the latter’s hand dropped to brush against the pocket of his jacket where his watch was resting. Kurt barely heart what Wes was saying (some jumble about a disastrous impromptu performance from at least eighty years prior). He though he could hear a strangely familiar, four-beat knock, as though there was the sharp contact of a hand against the door of a locked subconscious.  
  
The yells continued while Wes in vain tried to quiet them by adding to the cacophony with his gavel and Blaine’s hand disappeared fully into his pocket.  
  
“Why would we even  _consider_  what you’re asking?” David demanded.  
  
Kurt straightened up, prepared, if necessary, to interfere to correct the falling trajectory of his own romantic life, but it was as though the four knocks had cracked Blaine’s calm, polite façade, for he never quite got the chance.  
  
“I  _firmly_  believe that our reticence to performance in public nearly cost us a trip to Regionals. We’re becoming privileged porcelain birds,” he said loudly and suddenly. The noise that restarted almost instantly at this proclamation was astronomical, but they almost faded into the background, like a poorly functioning radio, for they were nothing entirely compared to the dangerous blaze in Blaine’s usually calm eyes. The look was a momentary accompaniment to the annoyance his voice expressed, but it was so foreign, so powerful, like a royal crossed on too many times, that Kurt could not escape it even after it was gone, even after its spark had been replaced by a look of mild confusion, as though Blaine was also astonished that such a countenance could exist within him.  
  
The moment passed, the Warblers conceded, the Blaine that Kurt knew beamed happily.  
  
“Why the GAP?”  
  
“Oh, the guy I like is junior manager there.”  
  
 _Oh._

  
***

  
_Was it too much? It was too much._  
Kurt hardly paid attention. Even in the light of his tragic romantic life, his mind kept wandering to the tall, wild-haired man in a long brown trenchcoat that had caught his eyes during Blaine’s serenade, winked, and then vanished into the crowd. Kurt couldn’t remember where he’d seen him before.

  
***

  
_I thought the guy you were going to ask out on Valentine’s Day was me.  
I’m not very good at romance. I don’t want to screw this up._

  
***

  
“So . . . my romantic afternoon blowing up in my face . . . any thoughts on how to fill it?”  
  
Kurt scrunched up his face against the onslaught of cold wind and snow that hit them was they exited the coffee shop. He shifted his coffee out of his dominant hand so that he could adjust his scarf against the weather, which had turned bitter after a strangely mild winter. He glanced at Blaine out of the corner of his eye. “Well, since we’ve got the day and you still look upset, I suggest a shopping trip. Always does me good,” he added cheekily. “Also, I have the weirdest suspicion that you own nothing but that horrid blazer, and I must strive to remedy the situation.”  
  
And that was precisely how Kurt Hummel came to be lounging on a couch in the dressing room of Barney’s, fiddling casually with his iPhone while Blaine struggled with the pile of clothes that Kurt had shoved into the changing stall along with the boy.  
  
“I kind of like this, actually.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“No, that color is completely wrong,” Kurt said, going back to his phone and smirking to himself when Blaine retreated, looking slightly put out, back behind the changing curtain. “Try the burgundy!”  
  
Kurt frowned momentarily at his Facebook app before putting his phone down, leaning back and waiting for Blaine. His gaze passed over the discarded Dalton blazer lying on another chair, over the glittering gold of the pocket watch chain, and almost the minute it caught Kurt’s eye, he felt that pull again. That strange, indescribable obsession that he had with the watch whispering to him so loudly he would have through it was actually doing so, rather than it simply being his imagination (though the possibility of that was certainly nonsensical).  
  
He leaned forward curiously and reached over to the jacket, entwining his fingers around the chain. It was surprisingly warm for a metallic object, but he reasoned that it must be the remainder of Blaine’s body heat still clinging to it. He pulled the watch out and let it fall heavily into his hand. He tried to swallow the odd lump in his throat as he leaned forward over his hands, his thumb passing over the meaningless swirls that outlined the outer cover of the watch. He wanted to read them, but that was ridiculous; they weren’t words, after all, and he tried to console himself with the absurdity of the notion.  
  
His thumb hovered over the button that would flick it open. There was a rush of blood to his head and he couldn’t tell whether the four subsequent drumbeats were his heart or some strange alteration in the passage of time reflected in the second hand of the odd watch. Whether the insistent whisper of  _open me, c’mon, c’mon_  was the persuasion of the curiosity of his subconscious or something outside of him entirely. Absurd.  
  
“Kurt, I don’t have a . . . Kurt?” Kurt could almost hear the furrow of Blaine’s brow in his voice, but it came from a great distance, as though through fog, as if Kurt had fallen into the abyss of an unknown time.  
  
“What are you doing?” Blaine asked, his voice curious, but Kurt could almost hear an inexplicable caution in it.  
  
“I want to . . .”  _to what?_  “know the time.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Kurt looked up at Blaine, who looked shocked at the very notion, as though the very notion of using his watch to tell the hour was ridiculous. But that couldn’t be.  _That_  was absurd. “Open it,” Kurt prompted quietly, raising the watch up to Blaine, who looked almost nervous, but it was in a way that Kurt could see had no clear explanation.  
  
“Kurt . . . it’s broken. It always has been,” Blaine murmured. When Kurt’s hand did not waver or drop, he repeated, “It’s never worked.”  
  
“But I can hear it,” Kurt murmured, “like four heartbeats. Softly, quietly in the background. Like they’re trying to hide from the world—”  
  
“It’s never worked, Kurt—”  
  
“So open it.”  
  
“Why does it matter?”  
  
“Because it’s grabbed hold of me in this bizarre manner and I can’t stop thinking about it,” Kurt said imploringly, the four beats in the back of his mind increasing with the beat of his own heart. “Maybe if you open it—”  
  
“Kurt?” Blaine murmured, looking concerned at the sudden appearance of Kurt’s agitated state.  
  
 _C’mon, c’mon._  
  
“Just open it, please?”  
  
Blaine inhaled, his eyes locked on Kurt’s glowing ones before closing his hand over Kurt’s to take the watch from him, fingers lingering a moment longer than necessary, though which boy was supposed to be comforted by the motion was unclear. Kurt let out a small amount of the breath he had been holding, but his quick eyes caught the startled movement that Blaine made when the transfer of the watch’s weight was complete, as though he detected some change in it since it had last been in his possession. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips and, with a small, determined breath, he pressed his finger to the stitch and, in the blink of an eye, the watch popped open.  
  
A moment, short yet timeless.  
  
“See, I told you it’s broken—”  
  
Whether Blaine had stopped talking or sounds had simply stopped reaching Kurt was unclear, but it happened soon after the watched had popped open, in the brief amount of time it would have taken for the beat of four to play out again. The watch lay solid in Blaine’s palm for a moment, the ticking pattern clearly discernible then. It was simple and metallic and almost, almost ordinary for the most fleeting of moments.  
  
That was before the soft, golden fog seeped from it, like the glittering of fairy dust riding on the wind. The ticking beat increased in volume, rising like the swell of a wave in the ocean and with it came an almost brilliant light, a glow that was soft and warm, yet blinding at the same time. It was sunlight that lit up Blaine’s astonished face, turning his brown eyes into a riveting shade of gold.  
Kurt’s eyes struggled against the piercing brightness of increasing light, but as the molten gold of Blaine’s irises disappeared beneath the falling of his eyelids, Kurt was forced to clamp his eyes shut and turn away.  
  
He didn’t know how long he sat there, body twisted away from the light until it faded into the dullness of the Ohio changing room.  
  
The four beats slowly faded out of hearing.  
  
“Well, this is a rather unexpected development.”  
  
Kurt turned his torso back the way he’d been facing, opening his eyes and blinking away the sunspots that still lingered in front of his vision, blocking out the room, which by contrast now appeared unsettlingly dim. When he was finally able to see again, he was actually surprised that very little about the room itself had changed, even in Blaine himself. But the smallest of changes, in such a situation, can be surprisingly prominent.  
  
Blaine was standing, arms stretched out before him, his eyes scanning them up and down as though he had expected to be transformed into something else and now, fears abated, he was making sure that all his limbs were properly attached. He looked taller, somehow, in the way he stood, shoulders more loose than Kurt had ever seen Blaine hold them, but something in the curve of his spine made it look like he was holding himself up in a more confident manner.  
  
His hands dropped and without a warning he was at the full length mirror, squinting at himself and Kurt caught the first clear glimpse of his face. He looked the same as he always had in his handsome, old Hollywood way, but that blaze, that depthlessness that Kurt had caught a glimpse of when Blaine had lost control of himself and called the Warblers privileged porcelain birds was back and lingering, with the oddest grace of wisdom, cleverness and . . . age.  
  
The easiest way that Kurt could think to describe it was to say that the pieces of a different puzzle were used to put together the same Blaine, but that one was, inexplicably, missing. One that would explain the sadness in his eyes and the contrasting wrinkles of laughter around them.  
  
“Well . . . not because of a regeneration gone awry,” Blaine said suddenly to himself, causing Kurt to start.  
  
“Blaine?” The name fell past Kurt’s lips in a whisper.  
  
Blaine didn’t reply, running his tongue over his teeth. “But then why . . . and why come back?”  
  
“Blaine?” Kurt said, a little louder this time.  
  
The latter’s face fell from its scrunched up position to one of supreme surprise and his eyes flew up to meet Kurt’s in the reflection of the mirror. “Oh, me?” he exclaimed, looking genuinely interested. Before Kurt could answer, Blaine twirled around gracefully and tilted his head at Kurt. “Blaine, really? I’ve never gone by that. Blaine what?”  
  
“I . . . Anderson . . . Blaine, what . . . ?” Kurt breathed, his eyes wide and mind racing.  
  
“Right, yeah!” was the excited reply, as though Blaine had just then remembered and that fact alone pleased him. Kurt shot him a confused look and the excitement in Blaine’s face calmed slightly. “He told you about them, didn’t he? His dreams. This watch.” He held up the still, dull device. “They weren’t really dreams, you know. Not really. Call it what you will, Kurt Hummel,” (Kurt started when his name was uttered, as though in the changes present in his friend he hadn’t expected his own name to stick), “Memories, the bleeding through of a hidden entity, but certainly not just dreams.”  
  
There was the odd, unspoken statement that floated between them that pierced Kurt’s heart.  _But you knew that, didn’t you?_   _Somehow you knew it was all real._  “Who are you?”  
  
“I’m the Doctor,” was the simple reply, the utter simplicity of that one moment more startling than anything to occur thus far.  
  
“What happened to Blaine?”  
  
“I’m still him. Sort of. Just more so.” When Kurt didn’t reply, Blaine—the Doctor, was it?—clapped his hands, his whole demeanor changing, and said, “Right, so, moving on. I should probably figure out where I parked. What do you say to a scavenger hunt, Kurt Hummel?”  
  
Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the blazer off the seat next to Kurt, flocked it over his shoulder and, with an almost indiscernible wink, disappeared from the dressing room.


	3. Two Hands, Two Hearts

Kurt remained sitting in the plush seat of the dressing room, time passing slowly again after Blaine—no, no, _the Doctor_ ; the difference between the two was somehow astoundingly obvious—had run out. The pieces of what had just occurred seemed to be resisting being put together properly, the vagueness of any explanation an additional handicap. He probably should have stayed where he was, should have let the Doctor go and let the reality of his own life creep back in while the fantasy of that odd being ran back to where it came from. His was a world of boundaries and distinctions, wasn’t it? Wasn’t he well versed in the logic that one did not follow the murderer up into the attic of one’s house in horror films? But despite all things, all distinctions, all dangers (somehow he sensed there would be some), this was still Blaine, wasn’t it? Somewhere, underneath it all, was Blaine, the boy he’d openly admitted to being infatuated with not an hour ago. And wasn’t all this in some way Kurt’s fault? Kurt and that damn possessiveness the pocket watch seemed to have claimed over him.

And then, of course, there was his sudden inability to control his own limbs, for before he’d even reached the conscious decision of a conclusive action, he was on his feet and running out of the room.

Kurt rounded the corner of the dressing room just in time to see Blaine disappearing out the back door of the store and he sprinted after him, heart pounding in sudden anticipation at the mere thought of losing him. He burst through the emergency exit double doors, this time to see Blaine again vanishing into a bright blue box with the glowing label of “Police Public Call Box.”

Kurt almost tripped over his own feet trying to skid to a halt at the sight, his eyes widening. The box seemed so out of place in the small, back alleyway behind the mall in Lima, Ohio, that it appeared to blow the bizarreness of Kurt’s entire afternoon to ridiculous proportions. He found himself again frozen in the bitter stillness of the mid-February weather, waiting for something to happen. Waiting, waiting, but for what? _What are you always waiting for, Kurt Hummel?_ the breeze whispered softly.

“What are you doing?” he murmured, approaching the door and pushing it open. He had expected to stumble upon Blaine doing whatever one might be doing in a police public call box. He wasn’t entirely prepared (though in hindsight he really thought he ought to have been) for the vast expanse of room that stretched out before him. An other worldly feeling emanated from every part of the room, from the intricately messy console in the center to the very fact that there was far too much room within and very clearly not enough blue box to wrap around it. Yet, despite the fact that the room was so, so foreign, the word “magical” came to mind much earlier than “extraterrestrial.” And the only reason that Kurt could think of to be terrified was due to the fact that he actually _wasn’t_.

“Is it alien?” he whispered, then proceeded to mentally smack himself because _of course_ it was. But he didn’t know what else to say or do. He felt as though he should take off running in another direction, but the overwhelming flood of all that surrounded him kept him rooted in place.

The Doctor (it was as though Kurt couldn’t bring himself to think of him as Blaine in this room) had turned around the minute Kurt had burst in and was looking at him with an odd mixture of surprise, satisfaction and sympathy.

“Yes,” was the answer and it hit Kurt almost like a slap in the face, not because he wasn’t expecting it, but because of the delivery. Because of the sheer matter-of-fact nature that proceeded to peel off further the mask that had been Blaine Anderson.

“Are you?”

The Doctor tilted his head, the look in his eyes strangely affectionate and replied, “Yes,” rather softly.

“Prove it.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows flew up at this demand, which had escaped Kurt before he could stop it. _Prove it_ , really? As though he didn’t believe it. But he stood still, not backing down from the imperative, because some part of him yearned to know what reaction would be elicited. He held his breath, wondering whether he was waiting for an alien attack, or for time to unfreeze, or for his alarm to ring. The Doctor eyed him thoughtfully, looking at him in a way that almost brought the simplicity of Blaine Anderson back into his expression.

They stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity when suddenly the Doctor took a deep breath, so reminiscent of his (Blaine’s) pre-GAP attack nerves that Kurt’s heart pounded in his chest, and walked toward Kurt. His steps were slow and his eyes locked with Kurt’s, as though he had a sudden, strange necessity for caution.

“Give me your hand,” he said once he got close enough to touch Kurt, his own reaching carefully to make the connection. The minute they touched, the lightest brush of fingertips, Kurt’s stock-still façade broke, as though a gust of wind flushed against him and he stumbled back several steps like he’d been electrocuted, his eyes widening at the sensation.

The Doctor’s face fell ever so slightly, the flash of sorrow almost too great for the situation at hand. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured, his voice almost stern but his eyes flashing with a bolt of . . . desperation?

Kurt wet his lips. “I’m not afraid of you.”

The Doctor gave him a curious look for a beat before taking another step forward. “Then trust me. Give me your hand.” He put his hand, palm up, into the space between them and, rather than reaching for Kurt, he waited until the latter, after eyeing him closely, placed his palm against the Doctor’s, with every movement a contradiction between anxiety and curiosity.

Nothing, no gust of wind or wave of energy or spark of electricity (whether literal or metaphorical) passed between them in that instant. Kurt didn’t know why he’d expected something . . . forbidden in the touch, but when there was no indication of negative repercussions, the smallest bit of tension leaked out of his shoulders.

He thought the Doctor caught the movement, because after it occurred, the Doctor wrapped his fingers over Kurt’s hand and repositioned slowly. With a quiet murmur of, “put it to your heart,” he closed the space between them again and, very gently, pressed Kurt’s hand to his chest.

Kurt felt the rise of his chest press back against his hand as the sudden need to gasp for breath overtook him. For, despite all the times that he’d fantasized about a moment like this with Blaine, he was overwhelmed by such an unexpected onslaught of emotions that it was amazing that he didn’t stumble backward again. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen as a result of the action, but the Doctor was watching him carefully for any signs of discomfort and the familiar gaze combined with the great unknown that was this entirely foreign being before him sent a thrill straight through to Kurt’s soul. His heart was pounding and he was certain the Doctor could feel it despite the fact that Kurt’s hand was between the two entities.

“What—”

“Does this prove, exactly?” The Doctor interrupted, a mild twinkle in his eye. He didn’t provide a verbal answer to Kurt’s question, but instead removed Kurt’s hand from where he had been pressing it and started to move it toward his own, until Kurt, who for a split second got the insane notion that there would be nothing there, could feel the steady pressure of a heart beat soothing his own pulse.

He wasn’t sure if he should see a difference or, again, what this was supposed to be doing by way of proof, but before he could protest at the pointlessness of the exercise, he though he could detect an indirect vibration, like a heart murmur, echoing each beat of the organ beneath his fingers. It was almost a steady beat of four, like the curious ticking of the pocket watch.

He said nothing, but the moment his brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate all his tactile abilities into the palm of his hand, the contact was eliminated. His eyes remained trained on their entwined hands as though he were hypnotized, but he could feel the Doctor’s constant gaze burning into him. There was a moment of stasis and carefully his hand was moved ever so slightly to the left (his left, the Doctor’s right) and pressed against he crisp material of the Dalton uniform as it fell over the right side of the Doctor’s chest.

And there it was, the heart murmur manifested in the steady pounding of the second organ residing in the cavity of the Doctor’s chest. His own lungs clenched and he inhaled sharply through his nose, his eyes never leaving their hands. As though anticipating a sudden movement of withdrawal, the Doctor’s firm grip on Kurt’s hand slacked to allow him to escape if necessary, but Kurt only flexed his fingers, almost clawing at the fabric, as though wanting physical contact to explain the surge of emotion flying through him.

“How . . . what—”

“Time Lord.”

The sharply inhaled breath, thus far held, escaped Kurt’s lips as a laugh and he glanced up to meet the Doctor’s anticipatory gaze. “How regal,” he said, slightly breathless. “And this . . . ?” he murmured, glancing quickly around the room to indicate his meaning before looking back at the Doctor.

The Doctor broke out into a relieved smile. “TARDIS.”

“Wow, you aliens sure like your T’s, don’t you?” Kurt replied quickly, almost enough to be surprised by the sudden return of his comfort with the being before him, as though the reveal of just how alien the Doctor was served as a boost to his humanity.

“It stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”

“It’s a time machine?”

“And a spaceship.”

“Well, sure.”

The Doctor huffed out a breath of laughter, his eyes leaving Kurt’s for the first time to momentarily scan up and down his body and this time he looked like he was trying to reassure himself of the reality of Kurt. When he looked back up Kurt could clearly see the Blaine in him, the human boy that had looked up with absolute wonder at him on the Dalton staircase, as though he had never seen the likes of him before. That same expression was there again, as though Kurt were being discovered for the first time, but this time it was enshrined with the experience of age by a being that owned a blue box that served as a time machine _and_ a spaceship. He hadn’t said so directly, but Kurt could sense an age in him that his body refused to show.

And to be looked at like that by someone who had presumably seen so much. . . . He had so many questions, but could hardly choose one to ask first.

“Well, okay, then,” Kurt said, breaking the timeless silence that had filled the room when he’d accidentally become caught in the gaze. The Doctor tilted his head curiously as Kurt’s hand dropped down from his chest. “I’ll . . . ummm . . . I’ll let you get on with whatever it is you do, then.”

The Doctor laughed, cocking his eyebrow. “Well, Kurt Hummel, I did not expect this from you.”

“Expect what?”

“You to walk away from something that you want.”

Kurt’s eyes widened, unsure of how he was supposed to take the statement. “And what is it that you think I want?”

“What every young person destined for greatness, yet suck in a run-down town in the middle of nowhere wants: a chance to see the stars.”

Kurt opened his mouth, but closed it without saying anything, his heart tugging him forward over an abyss.

“All of time and space,” the Doctor murmured, the words, familiar to him, falling from his lips. “Come with me.”

There it was. That offer that Kurt had yearned for presented as casually as if this were Blaine Anderson and he was inviting Kurt on one of their usual coffee dates rather than this supremely alien man proposing to pluck him from the dullness of Lima, Ohio and taking him . . . anywhere. Everywhere.

“With you . . . I don’t . . . I don’t even know you.”

“Yet you trust me,” the Doctor pointed out.

“But I . . . I can’t just pick up and leave . . . I mean . . . I have to take care of my dad and . . . and . . .” he stammered, because surely, it was madness, wasn’t it, to disappear life inside a blue box with a man with two hearts?

“Because there is so much keeping you here, Kurt? Even with your father, aren’t you the boy who’s always planned to run the minute he gets a chance?” the Doctor said quietly, his tone neither harsh nor accusatory, but almost intrigued. “Take your chance. Experience all that life has to offer.”

Kurt inhaled and, as though deep in thought, he pursed his lips and walked slowly past the Doctor toward the console. He gazed up at the crystalline, metal column, the strange collection of controls almost vibrating beneath his fingertips as his hand passed over them, as though geared for action. He felt the sudden itch in his feet to run. He glanced over his shoulder.

“All of time?”

The Doctor broke out into a grin at this subtle acceptance. “And space,” he replied smoothly, loosening his tie and dashing to the other side of the console, his fingers hovering lovingly over the machine. “And we could even have you back before dinner if that’s what you want.”

Kurt raised his eyebrows, smiling in amusement at the fact, his eyes scanning the strange machine as though he yearned to know how to make it come alive.

“But how on Earth could we pick a starting point?”

“Yes, things are terribly hard to choose when on Earth, aren’t they? I suggest, therefore, that we go somewhere else.”  


  
***

  
On Awena’s diagram of the universe, there was the smallest flash of light, like a spark of energy, flickering momentarily over a secluded area of the Milky Way galaxy. Awena caught it with her gaze, her eyes remaining on the place long after the light vanished. So intricately attuned to the universe she was so devoted to studying, she almost felt it shudder and she closed her eyes.

“Armena,” she murmured quietly to her personal advisor, “You may go. Shut the door behind you.” The click of the lock was the only indication she had that she was, for the moment, alone.

“Oh, Doctor, you again touch the untouchable,” she muttered, but her voice was sad rather than reprimanding, and sad more for herself than for him.

She took a deep breath, the only sound in the room the quiet swish of velvet and, lowering her head, murmured, “Oh, give me strength to face my fate.” The words whispered, she straightened and, in one swift, fluid motion turned and pointed her gun, whipped out of the confines of her gown, at the person who’d entered the room by shifting aside the red velvet curtains in the corner.

“Ah. You almost disappointed me, but I see you are not ignorant of my coming.”

Awena narrowed her eyes at the speaker, but the raised gun appeared to tremble even in the effort to keep it steady.

“Oh, darling. . . . You surprise me. It is so unlike you hold your weapon as though you think to defy that future which you have already seen coming to pass. His influence, no doubt. But you do not honestly think that you can escape the confines of your own fate?”  



	4. Origins

The floor of the blue box shook as the Doctor slammed his hand down on a yellow button. Kurt fell forward, gripping the edge of the console to keep from falling down on the metal grate below his boots. The whole room was filled with a whirring that would fade in and out like someone was fiddling around with the radio, unable to settle on a decent volume.

“Where are we going?” he yelled.

The Doctor glanced up with an almost sly smile, his hand spinning a wheel, but he didn’t reply. The end of the action brought the noise of the ship to a halt with a firm bump, as though the blue box hadn’t landed quite perfectly on solid ground.

Kurt exhaled, steadying himself. He glanced up to meet the Doctor’s brightly twinkling eyes. “Where are we?” he whispered.

 

His companion continued to grin cheekily. “Why don’t you go outside and see?”

Kurt raised his eyebrows, but took a step backward from the console. “So, when I walk out that door, I’ll be in a different time . . .” he murmured, his eyes on the Doctor even as he backed his way toward the exit, unable to quite keep the corners of his mouth from twisting upward, “On an alien planet?”

“Or you could be in a different time on the same planet,” the Doctor teased. “Or the same time on a different planet. The sky’s the limit.”

“Except not,” Kurt pointed out.

“Except not,” the Doctor accepted with mock solemnity.

Kurt smiled and, unlocking himself finally from the unabashed directness of the Doctor’s gaze, turned toward the door. His hand hesitated for a moment on the knob before he took a deep breath and stepped quickly outside.

He was met with the overwhelming bustle of an inter-town market place, each of his senses distracted, torn in all directions by the movement, the color, the noise. It shouldn’t have been anything too radically different from going to an open-air market in Europe somewhere, or even to the Lima Mall, but it was. It was in the amount of creatures present, creatures that varied in size and shape and color. It was in the merchandise being sold, ranging from something that Kurt could have found in a grocery store, but with the strangest twist and with a clear, different purpose, to bizarre devices that ranged from the most military, alien-looking to the most natural of crystals that sparkled in the slightly dim sunlight, which spread weakly across the sky. The sky was the color of lavender with faded gold clouds, which almost blocked out the twin moons that were being winked at by the grand star.

Kurt found himself trying to look every which way, following the movements of several figures around the TARDIS, his eyes wide. The more he stood outside, the more he seemed to grow in wonderment, taking in as much as he could as the cloudy sky slowly cleared.

“Where are we?” he whispered, unable to find his voice, as he heard the Doctor emerging from the TARDIS behind him. His gaze fixed on one of the figures at a nearby stand, taking in the fact that there was something vaguely human about her, but for the hue of her rough skin, the way her waves of pleated hair seemed to flow to the beat of a silent song and the patter of tattooing that swept majestically across her face.

The Doctor grinned and rested his hands on Kurt’s shoulders, squeezing gently. “Oh, come now. This is not the place to lose your voice, especially if you know how to use it.”

Kurt shook his head in disbelief as he continued to survey the figures, some of which were similar to the tattooed woman and some who were radically different. The variety of appearances, from the small, soldier-like figure, who oddly resembled a potato, to the man with a nose that looked like that of a feline and whose hair was defying gravity like ears, was staggering. Kurt forced himself to tear his eyes away from this strange mixing and matching of things incredibly familiar and he glanced at the smiling face of the Doctor, who looked positively radiant at Kurt’s reaction to the scene.

“Really, though, Doctor,” Kurt implored, “Where are we?”

The Doctor held up his finger, bidding patience for the answer, as though he were waiting for something extraordinary to occur before he could speak. His eyes were trained upward and, combined with the light tilt of his head, he appeared to be listening for a sign. Suddenly, he opened his mouth to let out a light, “Ah!” of discovery and, meeting Kurt’s eyes again, he silently indicated that Kurt listen.

Kurt raised an eyebrow and cocked his ear in imitation, thinking that he would have to listen hard to hear that which the Doctor wanted him to grab onto, but he could hear it almost instantly—the indiscernible rumble of the voices seemed to fade ever so slightly, not in the sense that it decreased in volume, but that it just changed, as though he were watching a dubbed foreign film and the dubbing language slowly faded to leave only the original behind. Just so, Kurt realized that in the bustle of words being spoken, he had caught the miscellaneous phrase in English without even being consciously aware of it, whether it was in the calm voice of the creature in the booth next to their parked ship or the shout of the arguing soldier fighting its way above the din. He felt, too, that he’d only recognized that strange fact when it faded away and was replaced by something that was purely . . . musical. The roar of the crowds suddenly rose and fell like the swell of a symphony, of which Kurt and the Doctor may well have been the only audience members. Each mouth appeared to produce a sound that, rather than speech, had the quality of a musical instrument, though more in the language than the actual voices themselves. The potato-like soldier thundered on like the rumble of drums while the negotiations in the close booth flowed beautiful as a flute medley.

Even the cool of the breeze and the beat-like pulse of the sun, which seemed to have had an increase in its warmth, paralleling Kurt’s growing fascination, had an indescribable musical quality about them. Kurt didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the swell that threatened to burst his soul and sweep him up on the playful breeze, so instead he simply closed his eyes and inhaled, the very music of the language flowing into him on the satin-soft, breath-like blow of wind. He willed it to fill his lungs so that he might forever be left with such a form of communication.

“Where are we?” he whispered, the Earthly extravagance of his voice paling in comparison of all those around him.

He opened his eyes to glance at his companion, who gazed out at the market and opened his mouth, the name of the planet coming out in the same, spell-binding musicality that was all around them.

Kurt inhaled as the words the Doctor uttered seemed to elevate him majestically against the backdrop of the natives. He was filled with both wonderment and a sudden, supreme jealously.

The Doctor took in his expression with a chuckle of amusement. As the laugh escaped his lips, the aura faded back into the dim rumble of noise and Kurt could again discern speckled phrases of English riding on the tide of voices.

“Doctor?” Kurt inquired, questions so rummaging through his mind that he could not choose which one to ask first.

“Celladoûr,” the Doctor replied, and something in the soft up-turn of his lips and the light accent with which he pronounced the word seemed to indicate that he was repeating the name of the planet in a language that Kurt could understand.

“Celladoûr,” Kurt breathed, looking around them. “I just . . . just now . . . what was that?”

“Kurt Hummel, you find yourself on one of the oldest planets in the universe,” the Doctor replied, his warm smile almost lost on Kurt as he once again because reabsorbed in the commotion around them. “Some say that it was here that music originated.”

Kurt started in surprise and turned to the Doctor with a look of slight confusion on his face. “I didn’t think that music would have originated anywhere. . . . Isn’t it just sort of a natural instinct?”

“Don’t we all come by our natural instincts by some form of evolution?” the Doctor countered. “But, like I said, it is one of the oldest fables about this planet, just as some say that time began on my home planet. But I’ve never gone back far enough to see either tale proven.”

“Your planet?” Kurt inquired, his curiosity peaked. The Doctor had continued to remain quite the mysterious being and Kurt eagerly latched onto anything that would reveal more a bout him. “Can we go there?”

The Doctor’s bright expression fell suddenly, as though coming to a realization about Kurt that pained him slightly. “I’m afraid not,” he replied gently.

Kurt’s brow furrowed and he was suddenly taken with the urge to embrace the sad being before him. “Why not?”

“It . . . It’s gone,” the Doctor said slowly, looking frustrated that the matter was too sad to say quickly. “It perished in a great war, along with my people.”

“You . . . you’re the only one left?” Kurt murmured in shock. He felt hypocritical all of a sudden, having been so lonely throughout his life while consistently surrounded by people who cared about him, while here he was faced with a being that, for all he knew, was truly alone.

The Doctor heaved a sigh that was followed by a slight, pained smile. “It’s in the past.”

“But . . . you have a time machine. Can’t you go back and change things?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. It is what it is and it couldn’t be any other way, so why dwell on it?”

Kurt nodded, not quite sure he understood, but he could sense the clear dismissal of the conversation. He scanned the crowds yet again, trying to pick a manner in which to change to the topic. The tattooed woman thanked her customers in a neat, clear English, which brought back the distance of pure music that had surrounded them only moments before.

“Doctor?”

“Hmm?” the Doctor hummed, looking somewhat distracted still.

“When you said that music may have originated here . . . how do you mean?”

“In the language . . .” the Doctor replied. “You heard a moment before, I hope, that the language here is very musical. It is said that as these people spread across the stars and their language developed and changed, its original nature was preserved in what came to be known as music.”

“But . . . I can hear English most of the time,” Kurt protested with a frown. “There was one moment when I could hear the music, but when I first came out and now. . . .”

The Doctor nodded his understanding, turning and placing a hand gently on his blue box. “The TARDIS has a translational mechanism. It kind of . . . gets inside your head and interprets the language. She was reluctant to turn it off (I’m sure she thought I’d get into some sort of trouble without it), but I could hardly impress you here with it on, could I?” he winked, some of the humor back in his voice.

Kurt opened his mouth, his cheeks warming slightly, and his gazed dropped down to the tips of his boots, wondering if the Doctor was aware that he hardly needed to try—just the reality that Kurt currently found himself in was impressive enough.

“Well, there’s no point in standing around chit chatting,” the Doctor exclaimed after a beat, his hand dropping down from where it had been resting tenderly on the TARDIS. “Why bother going to an alien planet if you’re just going to stand around outside your spaceship all day. Shall we, Mr. Hummel?” The Doctor offered his arm cheekily to his companion.

Kurt grinned and, slinking his arm into the Doctor’s, allowed himself to be led through the market. They walked past booths while the Doctor talked animatedly about each of them and their wares, from the humming, porcelain chamber pots being sold by the dozen by a man covered in a green armor of scales, to a hooded figure surrounded by small glowing balls that would continuously bounce merrily around his booth, to the woman with cat-like eyes selling what looked like maps and various astrological devices. It was here that the Doctor stopped their stroll, his eyes passing over the various maps and scales with a slightly confused look and, as though he felt some challenge to his knowledge and expertise, he pulled his arm out of Kurt’s and started pointing out to the vendor all sorts of inaccuracies in the star maps. Kurt paused with him, some interest in amusement at the spans of knowledge the Doctor began demonstrating, but Kurt’s eyes would unconsciously wander around the market, drawn to the sounds and sights of everything around him. His gaze fell on a booth that was emitting the musical rhythm of ticking timepieces and, taken again by a sense of curiosity, he left the Doctor’s side and made his way across the crowded bazaar.

The booth was one of those, few and far between, that had little to no potential customers struggling to buy the wares. The vendor sat in a chair by a fire burning toward the far side of her tent, scanning the crowds every once in a while, but not as though she was expecting anyone to stop and display any interesting what she had out to sell—a collection of some of the most beautiful timepieces that Kurt had ever seen (and he’d done a fair amount of searching for vintage watches). The collection was vast and of a myriad of cultures and, it seemed, different times, as though the woman had thus far been more interested in trading to expand her variety than actually selling, until the collection was as miscellaneous and haphazardly put together as she did, but in a way that oddly worked.

Her eyes fell on Kurt almost the instant he first looked up at her booth and her gaze remained directly trained on him as he made his way over and began curiously inspecting all that she had on display.

“You’re not from these parts,” she said simply and Kurt glanced up from looking at a watch with no hands or numbers, but only a strange collection of symbols that would periodically glide across the watch’s face. Her gaze was unabashed and Kurt was filled with a slight nervousness, the kind that only seemed to linger at his feet, but was nonetheless uncomfortable, like accidentally stepping into a puddle that was deeper than expected.

“No,” he smiled, “My friend and I arrived not long ago.”

“Oh, then it was you that brought the sun.”

Kurt’s eyebrows crinkled together curiously but, turning back to her wares, he chuckled and replied, “Oh, I hardly think so.”

She didn’t answer, continuing to watch him examining the contents of her booth, her look implying that she didn’t believe him.

“Your watches are beautiful,” Kurt murmured, running his hand over a couple that were obviously metallic, but seemed to flow like water. “I’m surprised you have no customers.”

“In such times people would rather not know the time.”

Kurt looked back up in surprise, the matter-of-factness of the statement contrasting its melancholy content and the cheerful air of the market. She was no longer looking at him, instead stirring something in her fire, her eyes trained on an hourglass sitting toward the corner of the remainder of her collection. Kurt tilted his head as his own vision took it in and he advanced toward it to gaze in amazement at its intricacy, at the slow, second-paced fall of the crystals within.

“Do not touch that,” was the stern reprimand that cause Kurt to realize that his hand had been unconsciously inching toward it.

“Is it counting down to something?”

“The day the sun disappears.”

Kurt blinked, looking up to ascertain whether there was a jest in the statement, but the woman was looking at him with the utmost earnestness, and no fear or apprehension. Kurt chuckled awkwardly, running his hand through his hair. “Oh, that’s all nonsense, isn’t it? Back home, they’re always predicting the end of the world, but nothing ever comes from it.”

“Where are you from, Sun-Bringer?”

“Earth.”

“Your time will come. Your planet is young. So not for a while, but your planet’s time will too come.”

Before Kurt could reply his nervousness to the foreboding prediction, he felt an arm slinging itself around his shoulders.  
“You humans, always wandering off,” the Doctor chuckled, his weight leaning casually on Kurt’s. “Can you believe that vendor with the star charts? All wrong. Completely. They were missing all the old stars and planets. My planet, too. That is some poor craftsmanship, I’m telling you—oh, these are nice!” he exclaimed, leaning them both into the shade of the booth to observe the clocks, his eyes sparking brightly. “What are you talking about, then?”

“Oh, you know. Disappearance of the sun. End of the world,” Kurt said with a feigned casualness, but his heart still beat nervously.

“Oh, that again?” the Doctor joked, glancing up to grin at the stony face of the woman.

“Where are you from then, sir, that you might joke with the fates of those lost or about to be so?” she inquired sternly.

The Doctor frowned at her. “I’m the Doctor and I’m from all over the place. Everywhere and nowhere, as it may be.”

“Nowhere because you cannot find it on a map?”

“Your maps are inaccurate.”

“Look at the night sky then, sir, and tell me that again,” she retorted. The Doctor didn’t reply, training his gaze downwards at the merchandise rather than upward at the clear sky, the hand that wasn’t around Kurt’s shoulders disappearing into his blazer pocket.

“Well, in my experience, planets and stars do not simply vanish without a trace,” he said finally.

“You have your experience, Doctor, and I have mine,” the woman said, glancing at the hourglass as it dropped another grain of crystal downward. “Perhaps if you cannot reconcile them, it is best you make your way from this place.

Kurt glanced at the Doctor in slight concern as the other man grew silent again, the strange shadow of sadness that neither of them had thought to question before or could even explain if they tried. The Doctor’s expression was solemn in thought for a moment, but his smile would appear every once in a while when one of the watches triggered an old memory.

“Yes, perhaps I ought to do that,” he murmured to himself before glancing up at Kurt. “What do you say? Ready to explore some more?”

Kurt gave him a small smile. “Always.”

“Very good,” the Doctor exclaimed, nodding quickly at the woman in the booth and steered himself and Kurt into the sunlight.

They’d barely begun swimming down the rapids of the crowd when Kurt paused again, struck by a sudden thought. “Hold on a second?” he inquired, ducking out from under the Doctor’s arm when the latter nodded and jogging back to the stall.

“Can I take this?” he asked, resting his hand gently on the hourglass.

The vendor looked up at him in surprise, her eyes flashing with suspicion. “No.”

Kurt suppressed a groan. He had, after all, gotten the answer he’d expected. “Please. I promise that I’m not trying to con you out of your wares or being facetious like my friend may have been, whether he meant to or not.”

She frowned at him, her eyes still narrowed and attempting to ascertain his purpose. “Why do you ask, then? What purpose could you possibly have with an hourglass counting down to the doom of my planet, especially if you aim to leave it?”

“Look . . . May I ask your name?”

“Demora.”

“Look, Demora,” Kurt started, looking at her appealingly. “I understand what it’s like to constantly be looking at the clock ticking away, waiting for something. For me it was always the signal that I could take off running. I can’t imagine what it’s like sitting here, watching the dust fall away, waiting for what you’ve been told is the end. That’s no way to live and people understand that and so they’ve stop giving you business. They do away with time so that when the end comes, they’re living rather than sitting in anticipation of it. Let me take it, please. When the grains run out, I promise I’ll bring it back to you and I have no doubt that we’ll laugh over it when I do. But in the meantime, don’t live your life with one eye trained on the seconds you have left.”  
Demora opened her mouth in shock, looking at Kurt’s sympathetic smile as though she’d never come across anything like him before. The edges of her lips perked up slightly and she carefully picked up the hourglass and gave it to him.

“You are really quite something, Sun-Bringer.”

“Indeed,” he replied, winking cheekily before ducking back through the crowds to the Doctor, who raised his eyebrow questioningly.

“Sun-Bringer?”

“What, don’t you think I simply radiate sunshine?” Kurt laughed, leading the way back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor let out a quiet laugh, watching his companion bound away cheerfully. “You radiate something, all right,” he muttered softly to himself before following suit.  



	5. On Madness and the Temptations of the Cosmos

“Kurt, come on! Run!” the Doctor yelled over his shoulder as the two of them sprinted from the army of baboons that strangely resembled the flying monkeys from _The Wizard of Oz_. “You slow down, you die!”

“Yeah, well, if you run too fast in these boots, you kind of die too!” Kurt shouted after him with a grin as they rounded a street corner and the TARDIS came into view. The Doctor let out a hearty laugh at this impeccable insight and his hand flew back to grab Kurt’s, pulling the two of them forward in an increased pace as the howls of their pursuers neared them. They fell upon the blue box with an “Oompf!” of exclamation between them and the Doctor slipped the key quickly into the lock and pulled Kurt inside after him.  
Kurt slammed the door shut and leaned quickly against it, almost aghast at how calm the Doctor’s demeanor had turned the minute the door had closed against the noise of the planet outside. “Hurry up and get us out of here!”

“Oh, psh, we’re fine now!” the Doctor laughed, loosening his tie and tossing the Dalton blazer, which he absolutely refused to discard, over a railing. “That door could hold out hordes of Genghis Khan. Believe you me, he was not pleased when he figured that out.”

He laughed at Kurt’s incredulous look and when it seemed clear that Kurt did not care to move from the door until they were far away from any sort of attack, he skipped up the steps, hit a few buttons on the console and the whir of the engines filled the space around them. Kurt exhaled.

“You know, you should really come with a ‘wear comfortable shoes’ warning,” he groaned lightheartedly, dropping down on the steps and easing his feet out of his boots gently.

“I thought it was implied with the whole ‘we’re going to be roaming around potentially dangerous times and foreign planets’ bit.”

 

“Ah. You left out the bit about you being potentially dangerous,” Kurt joked.

“Yeah, that’s usually implied too.”

Kurt snorted, flexing his feet a couple of times before pulling his boots back on. “Well, I hope that I’ll at least get to perform my daily moisturizing routine, because all this sprinting and sweating will wreak havoc with my pores.”

For a brief moment there was no reply and Kurt glanced up with a smile to see the Doctor watching him with the most incredulous expression. “What?”

“Did you . . .” the Doctor started, his eyes wide and his mouth straining to stay in a straight line, as though he were trying very hard not to laugh, “Did you say you moisturize?”

Kurt frowned. “Yeah, why?”

The dam that was the Doctor’s poker face broke almost instantaneously and a rushing river of laughter escaped him. Kurt’s eyes widened in slight confusion as the normally composed man doubled over, his eyes squeezed shut in his laughter.

“What’s so funny? Doctor?”

“Just . . . oh, god, It’s been years since anyone’s mentioned moisturizing and oh, the memories!” the Doctor wheezed.

“Doctor! Stop laughing! I’m serious! If I go a day without moisturizing, bad things happen!” Kurt laughed over the echoing peals of laughter, trying to keep up the notion of shock and horror in his voice despite the comedic picture of the Doctor doubled over the console of the TARDIS for no apparent reason. “Horrible things! On par with the universe exploding!” He giggled and quickly tried to hide it by covering his mouth with his hand. “Come on, it’s not like I’m asking you to moisturize me or something!”

“‘Moisturize me!’ Oh, good lord, you’re killing me, Kurt!” the Doctor choked out, wiping tears of merriment at the allusion to a distant memory. “I just . . . Oh man . . . I’m sure I have something to ease your troubles,” he laughed. “I’ll go but . . . _moisturize me_ . . . I can’t . . .”

“Doctor! It’s not that funny!” Kurt yelled after him as he disappeared from the TARDIS’s main room. “I don’t understand why it’s so funny,” he murmured, almost affectionately, to the empty room.

“Because there is a certain order in words that activates distant memories that while in time were rather unpleasant, in retrospect can be rather amusing.”

Kurt let out a startled yelp at the sound of the voice that rang out unexpectedly behind him, a woman’s voice, and his accompanying leap was turned into a rather ungraceful twirl in midair as he whirled around to try to locate the source. He could barely contain another shocked exclamation as his gaze fell upon her (for indeed it was a her), wild-looking and curious.

She eyed him expectantly, the depthlessness of her eyes bearing into him, making him forget words and events and even her raggedy dress and disheveled hair and all he could say in response to the universe staring him in the face was a stuttered, “What?”

“Cassandra,” she responded simply, tilting her head.

“I . . . _what_?” Kurt stammered, talking a step back as though the flicker of her eyes away from him, however momentary, released him from the spell of her sudden presence. “Who are you?”

“He started leaving my brakes on again,” she murmured thoughtfully to herself, glancing to Kurt’s left.

“ _What_?”

“It reminds him of her. The silence. He doesn’t remember it now, but it does. And he will. So I allow it, aggravating though it may be,” she continued, as though she weren’t even paying attention to the boy before her.

“But who _are_ you?” Kurt insisted, apprehensive but oddly unafraid of this strange materialization, the same way he’d been unafraid when he’d first stepped into the TARDIS, or when he’d first felt the beat of the second heart in the Doctor’s chest.

“I just told you,” she answered, something in her voice like a train of thought that kept jumping tracks. “But who are you, Kurt Hummel? How did you come to be here, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

Kurt started, those eyes piercing into him again, closer than before. How had he not realized that she’d approached the TARDIS console? “I . . . I’ve always been here! How did _you_ get in _here_?” he demanded.

“Yes, that’s the thing, isn’t it? You’ve always been here. But have you? Logically, you weren’t here until you were, but then you were always here, even before you were. Curious.”

Kurt mouthed openly, his mind struggling to keep up with the stream of words that she was throwing at him, trying to make sense of her. Because on the surface, it was madness, gibberish, nothing more. But what unnerved him was that some part of him knew _exactly_ what she meant. Yet her words made no sense.

“You’re crazy,” he finally said, taking another step backwards as she circled the TARDIS console, her eyes not directed at him.

“Mad . . . am I? Perhaps. But he’s mad too and you don’t fear him. Curious, very curious.” Her eyes again glanced up to the doorway to Kurt’s left.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Kurt murmured, trying to come to terms with the fact that he was nervous, yes, but not frightened.

“Yes, but don’t you think you ought to be? But then you were never afraid, were you? Box appears out of nowhere, a box that no one else can see and into the box disappears a man before man and box disappear together into nothing, then time and space appear as a woman in that very same box, years later and you are shocked, but not afraid. But you will be. Soon enough. But not for yourself. Never for you, though you have cause enough. Curious—he’ll be back soon,” she said suddenly, catching Kurt glancing over his shoulder. “When I tell you that it’d kill you, he’ll come back.”

Kurt inhaled sharply and met her eyes, stumbling back when he found her close. “Who are you?” he breathed because he wanted to know and maybe he would then understand how she could list events that weren’t accurate, that had never occurred, but that something in him couldn’t necessarily dispute. He had a man with a box, but that box had never disappeared without him in it.

“I told you. I told you twice now. In your soul you know, I think, you curious boy with your curious soul. Why then, curious, special, impossible boy, do you not believe in the impossible?”

“I’m not special,” Kurt said automatically.

“You are. And he knows it. After all, you ask the right questions. Why am I here, curious boy? I am always here, spirit confined but once, free and yet impossibly captured. Release, though impossible, has occurred once before, never to repeat, but yet here I stand, spirit whole in the light of the soul of a curious boy. They want to touch you, light of your soul.”

“Who?”

Kurt was rooted in place, wholly mesmerized, as she approached until they were almost nose to nose and he could feel an oddly familiar warmth emanating from her, could see the glow of all the universe, all of time and space, in her eyes.

“The stars.”

Kurt’s brow furrowed. “You mean I want to touch the stars?”

“I would have said so, curious boy. No, they want to touch you, but they wait, wait for the right time, because once they do, if not done properly, the light will extinguish itself forever.” Her eyes looked almost sympathetic, but the sound of her voice, even for its sudden softness, did not change or waver.

Her other words seemed like years before. _He’ll come when I tell you they’ll kill you._ He wanted to look over his shoulder, to see the warm figure bounding in, laughing bout moisturizers and fond memories, but her eyes held him in place.

“Not long now,” she murmured, her hand hovering hear his cheek, as though controlled by those same urges she’d been telling him the stars had. “I can see it, the way I could always see it all. But curious, boy, how your fate relies on a choice, when she so normally dislikes relying on anything at all.”

“What choice?” Kurt whispered, his skin tingling in anticipation of her hand.

“The one between the touch to save you and the touch to kill you. But the choice isn’t as simple as it appears, because the causes and effects are often misread, even by the best of seers. And even the best of seers are not what they appear.”

Her hand lingered, a quiet moment, and Kurt found himself closing his eyes when a crash from his left jarred him from one spell to another.

The woman before him, the mad woman with endless eyes, blinked, but did not look surprised, nor did he feel released. He followed her gaze as she turned her head, the fondest smile lingering at the corners of her mouth, as though she had some sort of pleasure in surprising an old friend.

The Doctor stood at the top of the staircase he’d disappeared up. Whatever he had found in the depths of the TARDIS was shattered on the floor, the whole of his persona shocked into surprise as he stared open-mouthed at the woman, Kurt’s presence completely lost on him. There was something so open, so gloriously beautiful in his expression that he bound up Kurt more than she did. He was riveted, frozen in place, the ancient man with a young face the only thing he could see.

And so he barely heard her, barely registered her turning back to him, as though time had stopped for all but her. There was something akin to the whisper of a breeze in his ear.

“I’ll spoil something for you, impossible boy, because I love him as much as you do, in your heart of hearts, though you may not realize it as yet. They are one and the same, him and that which you have come to this life to save, but if you move to save the wrong one, you will lose them both forever.”

There was a sigh in his hair and a tingle on his cheek and when it vanished, he knew instinctively that she was gone.


	6. Answers (Or, Rather, a Sad Lack Thereof)

“No!” the Doctor yelled the minute he and Kurt were again alone in the main room and he leapt down the stairs in one fluid motion, ignoring the spilled mess from the jar he’d dropped. “No, no, no, no, no, come back!” he shouted, skidding around and banging his hands on various buttons and grunting in frustration when they didn’t appear to elicit any sort of response. “Come on, girl, you can’t just show up and vanish without an answer, you _can’t_!” he groaned, banging down his hands and hanging his head, his back reflecting the heaving of his chest.

Kurt didn’t move, still held in place by some invisible force and only following the Doctor with his eyes, but he was suddenly incredibly overwhelmed by the outburst of uncharacteristic violence and emotion that the presence of the mysterious woman had elicited in the Doctor and his heart prodded him with a message that he didn’t dare read.

But the feeling disappeared as quickly as the anger and frustration seemed to leak out of the Doctor, as though they couldn’t quite find it in their places to stay in his body and therefore fled and left quiet resignation behind.

“I don’t understand, though,” the Doctor muttered, running his hand gently over the smoothness of the TARDIS console, as though feeling guilty for having hit it only moments before. “You said you couldn’t come back and suddenly you can? Explain, Sexy, because nothing has changed—”

“Sexy?” Kurt repeated, finding his voice, with a raised eyebrow.

The Doctor stiffened, as though he’d forgotten that Kurt was there and when he turned to face the boy his eyes were wide.

“Nothing but you . . .” the Doctor said, taking a step forward, slowly, like he’d come to the sudden belief that his companion ought to be treated with caution. “But how? You couldn’t have. You’re not—”

“Special?” Kurt whispered, the wild woman’s voice echoing in his mind.

“I didn’t say that, why would you think that?” the Doctor replied quickly, his eyes flashing.

“You think I’m special, then?”

“How long was she here?”

“Since you left. Answer the question.”

“Why?” the Doctor demanded, crossing over to where Kurt was and quickly stepping into his personal space. “What did she say to you?”

He was close and his breath glossed over the tip of Kurt’s nose. His eyes, brown and glittering, looked almost desperate, but from where the desperation came, Kurt knew not. He started visibly when the Doctor raised his hands and pressed them urgently to Kurt’s cheeks. The texture of the hands on his cheeks was unfamiliar, but their warmth engulfed him in a sudden memory, of a tall man with wild hair and sad eyes, and a woman with hair the color of the setting sun. And a blue box. A blue box that had enveloped a mysterious man and had left an eight-year-old boy, soul burdened by loss, widening his eyes in wonder. _Box appears out of nowhere, a box that no one else can see and into the box disappears a man before man and box disappear together into nothing._ What other forgotten things did she know?

“Kurt . . . what did she say to you?” the Doctor repeated.

“Nothing,” Kurt answered automatically before he could stop himself. He couldn’t even think of why he said it because, after all, she had said plenty. Riddles and warning and spoilers and he couldn’t pinpoint the need to keep that from his Doctor, yet there was that word, slipping out from between his lips. Nothing. _I’m not afraid. Yes, but don’t you think you ought to be?_

The Doctor closed his eyes and exhaled softly, though there was something in his countenance that didn’t allow Kurt to distinguish frustration from relief.

It was the possibility of relief that made Kurt’s heart pound. “Are you . . .” he started before hesitating. He knew who that woman was, didn’t he? Why didn’t he say? “Are you hiding something from me?”

The Doctor’s eyes flew open and the desperation that had been there was replaced with a sudden spasm of undeniable fear. Kurt almost regretted the question when he saw it.

“I don’t . . . I don’t _know_ ,” the Doctor finally breathed, age and defeat in his voice.

“You don’t know?” Kurt repeated incredulously. The Doctor’s hands were still on his cheeks, but the moment Kurt spoke they dropped down, heavy, before the question even finished leaving his lips.

The Doctor shook his head. “When you met me . . . I was hiding. I mean, I must have been. Time Lords don’t just don a human body for kicks, you know. They don’t hide like that unless they have true danger coming after them but . . . I can’t remember it.”

He paused, looking entreatingly at Kurt, who, for his part, remained sympathetically silent. “It hovers just outside my line of memory, the reason for the disguise and the trigger for release, something that I have to have been aware of, for how did I know if the danger had passed or what even the danger was? But it’s a memory enshrined by the mist of some divine specter.”

_You left out the part about being potentially dangerous. Yeah, that’s usually implied too._

Kurt inhaled softly, but he didn’t know what to say. Stolen memories, missing memoires. The concept came to him as though he had learned it once before, but it had long since faded away.

“Doctor, tell me who she is,” Kurt prompted, because she had said things to him, ridiculous things, but maybe he could makes sense of them if she had some sort of identity. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

The Doctor shook his distraction away and looked around his magical blue box. “This is she.”

Kurt frowned. “The TARDIS?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying that woman is your time machine?” Kurt inquired, his brow furrowing.

“And space. You keep forgetting space,” the Doctor corrected with a gentle smile. When Kurt did nothing but knit his eyebrows further together, he continued, “She was forced into the form you saw once, a long time ago. It’s impossible that she should come back into it, though. The body died and she was confined back in her proper one. So it must have taken something very powerful to draw her out again and the way she disappeared, she couldn’t have been flesh and bone, but even an _apparition_ would take a lot of energy. . . .”

The Doctor paused in his spiel, his gaze flickering over the console of his beloved machine and oldest companion, as though willing her to give him answers. “She can see the whole of time and space, from the most magnanimous phenomenon to the smallest of atoms.” He turned back to Kurt imploringly. “So if she told you _anything_ at all . . .”

Kurt shook his head, something in the tone of her final words imploring him not to give unresolved riddles and secrets away. The Doctor was looking for answers about himself, but she had only offered up riddles and those riddles had been about Kurt. She’d said one thing, though.

“She said you started leaving the brakes on again,” he said suddenly.

It was the Doctor’s turn to look confused. “What?”

“She just . . . she said you started leaving the brakes on again and that it’s aggravating, but the silence would remind you of someone that would make you sad,” Kurt murmured, wondering why he felt inclined to spare such a seemingly trivial piece of information. “The rest was riddles and a little hard to follow.”

The Doctor looked at a loss for words, as though the information did indeed sadden him, even though he may not have remembered why. “She does that,” he said slowly, his eyes downcast and enshrined with thought.

Kurt wanted nothing more than to embrace the suddenly silent man before him and contrive a way to take the Doctor’s magical machine and transport them back to minutes before, when the most important drawback in their adventures was the apparent lack of moisturizers and comfortable yet fashionable shoes. But he couldn’t do so, didn’t even ponder whether or not it was _possible_. He simply stood there, helpless, riddles and nonsense running endlessly though his mind, but never forming words, never creating more than the sympathetic gaze of his green eyes.

The Doctor heaved a sigh momentarily and then, without any more warning, he shook his head like a dog trying to dry itself and clapped his hands. “Well, no use dwelling on riddles when we have not the answers. There are planets to be seen! Adventures to be had! You, my friend, have moisturizing to do!” Ignoring Kurt’s attempts to speak, he whirled around and punched some buttons on the console, pausing to smile at Kurt and quickly toss him his sonic screwdriver. “Setting 256B will fix glass! Nothing to do about the spilled liquid, but hey, what can you do?”

“Doctor—” Kurt tried to interrupt, fumbling with the screwdriver that almost flew past his fingers and attempting to break through the sudden mask of cheeriness that adorned the Doctor’s face.

“Left you some things in your room! Can’t have the universe exploding because Kurt Hummel hasn’t moisturized!” the Doctor chuckled, turning back to the monitors.

Kurt opened his mouth to protest at this sudden, clear dismissal, but the level of stiffness in the Doctor’s shoulders made him instead turn to the shattered jar and on the ground and piece it back together. He started to leave the room, the repaired glass oddly warm in his hands, but paused in his exit to look once more at the bowed head of the Time Lord, that old reawakened memory reminding him of at least one question that he figured might be not be so mysterious.

“You never answered my question.”

The Doctor started and glanced back at his companion. “Which one?”

“The one about me being special,” Kurt replied, tilting his head in a way that seemed to imply that he was searching for the truth rather than fishing for a compliment.

The Doctor frowned at this and looked almost like he was again refraining from asking what the womanized TARDIS may have said to elicit the question. “I . . . I have seen many things, Kurt Hummel,” he said finally, “and in all my 900 or so years of life, I have never met anyone that wasn’t important and I have certainly never traveled with anyone that wasn’t special. And I think on Earth you tend to say that old men are rather stubborn in their ways?”

Kurt couldn’t help but crack a small smile at the Time Lord, looking sixteen and yet referring to himself as an old man. He nodded in response to the almost answer-less reply and turned his back on the room.

The Doctor watched him go until he had disappeared into the outer rooms of the mysterious blue box. When the boy had vanished from view, he gave a slow exhale and turned back to the heart of his living machine, his eyes sad. He traced his fingers over the various doodads that flew them to all corners of the universe.

“Special? Yes, but who isn’t?” he murmured, gazing down at the machinery. “So tell me, why is he more so? Why could you suddenly come and say things to him that you couldn’t stay to repeat to me? What is it about him that draws you out into an impossibility?”  



	7. Like Sands in an Hourglass

_June 13, 19—_  
Lima, Ohio

It happened at the park, on a day that was more or less ordinary. The sky was slightly overcast, but this was nothing unusual—the past two months had presented the world with such weather, slightly baffling meteorologists, who had been expecting sunny, cloudless days for start of summer. But there was no accounting for weather, was there? Kurt’s dad had taken him to the playground, where he was occupying himself by frantically swinging his legs to try to get his swing to do something. The day and the activity, then, were rather quite typical. With one distinct exception.

His father was off minding his own business and doing the sorts of things that fathers did when their sons were playing at the park when Kurt first noticed it. Just beyond the baseball diamonds, filled with boys Kurt’s age who were getting dirty and sweaty for reasons that Kurt couldn’t really understand, stood a blue box that no one seemed to be paying any attention to.  
It wasn’t one of those plastic places where people went when they needed to relieve themselves. That was there too, of course, to adhere to the whims of eight-year-old boys, but this other box was something new entirely and after swinging for a couple of moments observing it and noticing that no one else seemed to be doing the same, Kurt jumped gracefully off the swing and decided to go inspect it, to ensure that it wasn’t simply a part of his imagination.

It wasn’t. He was almost upon the box, drawn curiously to it and briefly pausing to wonder why the police would have a giant blue box and why they would park it near a baseball diamond, when a joyful laugh, coming from the opposite side of the box than the playing kids, reached his ears and he turned around to see a tall man and a red-haired woman appear on the scene, casually skipping through the playground toward it (well, the man was skipping; the woman was following behind with a judging, yet amused look). Kurt knew their destination instinctively, but that still didn’t give him enough time to escape several paces away from the box to make it look as though he had been simply playing by himself near it rather than steadily getting nearer out of the need of curious inspection.

He ducked out of the way quickly as the man, unaware of his presence, nearly plowed right through him. A warning of, “Doctor!” caused him to sidestep at the last moment, the edge of his long coat just brushing against Kurt’s shoulder.

“Whoa, there!” he exclaimed in surprise, regaining his footing and looking at the small stature of the boy that had toppled over gracefully in his scurry away from the box. “You all right there, kiddo?”

Kurt nodded dumbly from his sitting position on the cool ground. The man ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair, spiking it and further ruffling it to a magnificent extent. “Well, good, good. Blimey, how horrible would it be if I’d trampled this adorable kid?” he inquired of the woman, looking positively anguished at the very thought. The woman looked as though her usual reply would have been to make a playful pass at the man’s soft-heartedness, but she simply rolled her eyes. She then glanced down at Kurt, whose eyes were once again drawn to the blue box situated in the middle of the play space.

She looked around at the other, oblivious children running around the playground before murmuring to the man, “Doctor, I thought that people were usually only aware of the TARDIS if you showed it to them.”

“Because it has a perception filter, yeah. Why?”

She glanced down at Kurt for a second time, who blushed as though he were being again caught doing something explicitly forbidden. He looked up to see the Doctor regarding him curiously, the crinkles of a smile on his face. The Doctor tilted his head before dropping down into a crouch until the two of them were more or less face to face.

“What’s your name, sport?”

“Kurt Hummel, sir.”

“Kurt Hummel . . .” his name sounded magnificent as it rode on the Doctor’s accent. “Pleasure to meet you, Kurt Hummel. I’m the Doctor.”

“I don’t like doctors.”

The Doctor looked surprised at this proclamation. “Why ever not, Kurt?”

“Dad said they’re supposed to get people better, but my mom didn’t get better at all.”

The Doctor’s face fell into sympathy, his eyes understanding. “Is that why you’re so sad?”

Kurt started. He hadn’t felt sad like the day he’d learned his mom wouldn’t be coming home for a long time and whatever sadness he currently felt went unnoticed, even by himself. The Doctor smiled softly at his reaction and murmured, “Can I tell you a secret, Kurt?”

Kurt nodded.

“I’m not that kind of doctor.”

Kurt frowned. “Is that because you have a police box instead of an ambulance?”

“Ah! You can see my blue box, can’t you, Kurt?”

“Of course I can!” Kurt declared indignantly. What an absurd question, really!

The Doctor laughed merrily. “Yes, yes, of course you can. Silly question. But it is a kind of ambulance, I suppose, only it takes special people, whether they’re sick or not.”

“Takes them where?”

“Anywhere they want.”

Well. Well, this was rather interesting. Kurt had often wondered, late at night after his dad had tucked him in and he was lying under the glow of the hallway through the crack under his door, whether or not it would be possible to run away. To go and again find that place and time where the sun would shine and he would be happy. If that place existed, the blue box could take him there, couldn’t it?

“Can you show me?” he asked eagerly.

The Doctor smiled sympathetically, ruffling Kurt’s hair. “I’m afraid not, sport.”

Kurt could feel the rush of burning tears threatening to attack him. “Is it because I’m not special?”

The Doctor looked horrified at the suggestion and he moved forward until he was mere inches from the tearful boy. His hands reached out and cupped both of Kurt’s cheeks gently. “You listen to me, Kurt Hummel.” He pressed their foreheads together. “I have never met anyone in all my years of traveling that wasn’t special and you are hardly an exception. You can see my blue box, Kurt, without my having to tell you that it’s there and that’s already special in itself. But I can’t take you with me because you want to go so that you can stop being sad, but I can’t help you that way. No matter how far you run, you won’t outrun your sadness. Trust me, I’ve been going for years. The only way you can get rid of it is time. And sometimes even that isn’t enough.”

The warmth of the Doctor’s hands pressed tenderly from both sides against Kurt’s cheeks before falling away and allowing the skin to be hit by the cool breeze of spring. Kurt wanted them back, the stranger’s hands as comforting and familiar as his own father’s. The Doctor straightened and reached down to pull Kurt up from his sitting position. “I’ll tell you what, though, Kurt Hummel. I’ll give you that magical moment that some might hear, but that no one else here could see. What do you say?”

Kurt nodded eagerly and the Doctor winked in response, turning back to his silent companion. “Well, there must be something in him if he’s managed to strike you dumb,” he teased, receiving a slap on the arm that he’d offered her with a cheery, “Shall we, Donna?” He opened up the door of the box and allowed her to step through first. “Until we meet again, Mr. Hummel, sir,” were the last words Kurt heard before the door closed and he was impatiently left awaiting . . . something. A moment of silence passed like the sweep of eternity before he heard the rising swell of a whirring, accompanied by the soft turn of light, like from a lighthouse, flashing light over a dark area even as it itself faded periodically away until the air echoed into silence and the space before Kurt was magically empty except for the small patch of sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds.  


  
***

  
He was surprised the encounter had slipped completely from his mind and that it had come back not at the sight of the trenchcoated stranger at the GAP or the blue box in the alleyway, but at the warmth of his Doctor’s hands on his cheeks, as though there was a transference of touch that had embedded itself in Kurt’s skin, to be recalled by any contact. But it could not be a coincidence that two of the brightest spots in his life involved the strange appearances of men calling themselves “Doctor.”

He sat in his chosen bedroom for hours after he left the Doctor in the main room, lying on the bed and twirling the sonic screwdriver carefully between his fingers, immersed in the returning freshness of the encounter so many years past. Or perhaps some part of him was simply waiting again . . . waiting for the Doctor to come find him.

He finally got up and made his way through the maze of hallways within the TARDIS until he got back to the main room. He scanned it quickly in search of the Doctor until he found him sitting on one of the two seats near the console, his feet on the other, hand holding the familiar pocket watch that had seemed the catalyst for bringing them to this moment. At the sight of the Doctor bent solemnly over it, Kurt found that all his questions did not seem enough to answer all the queries he had.

“The Doctor isn’t really your name, is it?” he asked quietly, calling the Doctor’s attention to himself.

The latter started and sat up, putting the watch back in his pocket. “Sorry?”

“The Doctor. It’s not actually a name, is it?”

The Doctor’s frown conveyed his puzzlement at the question, but he quietly conceded an answer. “No. It’s more of a chosen title, but a very rare few are privileged to a Time Lord’s true name.”

Kurt nodded. “So, like . . . can there be more than one Time Lord with the same title?”

“I’m sure it has happened before. Why do you ask?”

Kurt chose not to answer the question presented to him, fearing he wouldn’t get his answers if he offered one up in return. “So, there could be more than one Time Lord running around calling himself the Doctor?”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes and lowered his feet to the ground, standing to walk over to Kurt, his gaze unreadable. “No, Kurt, there couldn’t—”

“But you just said—”

“Because they’re all gone,” the Doctor said, ignoring the interruption. He almost looked angry. “I told you so.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“Years.”

“But you survived! So, maybe—”

“I survived because I was the one that killed them. No reason more,” the Doctor interjected sharply, his gaze flickering.  
For the first time in the thread of their conversation, Kurt didn’t know what to say. His eyes widened and his breath got caught in his throat. The Doctor, instigator of the genocide of his own people? The description failed to match up to the magnificent picture of the man before him and, for the first time, Kurt felt a flicker of doubt and a small sense of fear. “You . . .” he stammered. “But . . .”

“I had no choice,” the Doctor said quietly. “It was war and the whole of creation was at stake. It was the only way we could save it.” He fell silent, as though awaiting Kurt’s response, but Kurt couldn’t think of anything he could say in response. “Why are you asking me these things, Kurt?”

“Because I . . . I remembered something, but it doesn’t make _sense_ ,” Kurt murmured, biting his lip. He almost felt ridiculous for not saying exactly what it was he’d remembered because it was outlandish, for the very situation he was in was outlandish to begin with. When he finally spoke, it was the last question he had before he would resign to statement. “Did you ever know someone named Donna?”

The Doctor started in surprise. “How do you know about Donna?”

“When I was young, just after my mother died, I met a man in the park, traveling with a woman called Donna.”

The Doctor frowned, his nose scrunching up in a thoughtful way that Kurt couldn’t help but find wholly endearing before his eyes widened at a revelation and he looked at Kurt as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Kurt Hummel,” he breathed out softly, his voice low in a way that made Kurt blush. “Little Kurt Hummel from Lima, Ohio that didn’t like doctors.” He let out a soundless breath of laughter.

“That was you?” Kurt gasped.

“It was, indeed,” the Doctor murmured. “Little Time Lord trick to keep me alive and looking this good at my ripe old age of 900 plus. Kurt Hummel, as I live and breathe.”

Kurt laughed, averting his gaze away from the strong directness of the Doctor. “Funny coincidence, huh? You and me running into each other after all this time?”

“No.”

Kurt looked up to meet the Doctor’s gaze again, which had turned curiously scrutinizing. “No?” he asked, something strangely hopeful in his voice, though he wasn’t himself sure what it was he was hoping for.

“I’ve been traveling for a long time,” the Doctor said slowly, taking a step toward Kurt. “And I can tell you with absolute certainty that things are never purely coincidental. No, there’s something about you, Kurt Hummel.” They were almost nose to nose and the Doctor reached out a hand to cup Kurt’s cheek, as though to ground himself and simultaneously prove Kurt’s reality. “Something entirely unique about you that keeps pulling me toward you and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is.”

Kurt exhaled, caught up in the intimacy of the moment, the same soul drawing moment as the one when the Doctor had shown him just how alien he was. He thought that if the Doctor would just lean forward that small, final amount, they could just connect, right there and then. But he just looked, his long eyelashes fluttering on an invisible breeze each time he blinked. Those blinks were the only time their eye contact was broken until the floor of the TARDIS shook without warning, throwing Kurt off balance.

“Whoa there!” the Doctor exclaimed, the laughter at the déjà vu of the moment ringing though his voice, his arms grabbing Kurt’s elbows to keep the boy upright. “Careful, now.” The blue box was still again and Kurt’s footing was more sure. “You okay?” the Doctor asked gently.

“Yeah . . .” Kurt breathed, straightening. “What was that?”

The Doctor shrugged, pausing for a moment before letting go of Kurt and glancing at the monitors. “Some sort of disturbance . . .” he said, looking at the statistics and trying to ascertain exactly what that disturbance might have been.

Kurt nodded, glancing around the room for something to do while the Doctor was thus occupied, sensing that he would most likely be useless at any sort of data analysis. In doing so, his eyes fell on the hourglass from Celladûr, which they’d left secured near the seats. “Doctor,” he murmured, approaching it.

The Doctor hummed by way of response.

“The hourglass, Doctor.”

This seemed to grab his attention and he turned to glance at Kurt, who was observing the object in question and, in particular, the multitude of grains that had been transferred to the bottom, leaving the top wholly lacking. Their eyes met.

“You don’t think,” Kurt started, his gaze confused, as though here unsure of whether or not he ought to be putting two and two together.

The Doctor shook his head, though his eyes were skeptical of his own response. “I . . . no, it’s impossible.”

“Is impossible some sort of Time Lord code for, ‘Well, shit, this _really_ shouldn’t be happening?’”

“Usually.”

Kurt snorted, but it wasn’t from amusement. He paused for a moment. “I told her I’d return it when the crystals ran out.”

The Doctor pursed his lips. “Well, we can’t go making a liar out of you, can we?” He waited until Kurt nodded before walking around the console to direct them toward Celladûr. They were both gravely silent as the engines faded in and out. The landing was smooth, unlike the bumpy one they’d had when they’d first visited the planet.

Kurt looked at the Doctor, his sunny exterior from the last time he’d seen Demora and her stand clouding slightly from a nervous anticipation. “It’s all superstition, isn’t it?” he asked quietly, walking toward the door of the TARIDS.

“Like I said before, what she was saying is impossible.”

“But you also said—”

“I know. But you won’t know anything unless you open the door,” the Doctor acknowledged softly.

Kurt nodded and gripped the handle of the TARDIS door. He took a deep breath, as though gearing up for the plunge underwater, before wrenching the door open and stepping out quickly without even looking.

“Kurt!” the Doctor yelled in a panic as the boy disappeared into the darkness outside and, flicking a switch on the console, he sprinted toward the door as fast as he could.  



	8. In the Business of Awaiting the Impossible

“Kurt!” the Doctor shouted, his footsteps echoing on the TARDIS floor as he cleared all the steps between the raised surface of the console and the main floor in one swift leap and tried to regain his momentum and balance as he ran to the door, grabbing its edge in order to keep himself from tumbling out himself.

“Fine, I’m fine!” Kurt yelled, sounding surprised that he could do so in the first place.

The Doctor leaned out of his machine into the empty space around them and grabbed Kurt’s free arm, which still held onto the hourglass and wasn’t busy trying to keep him from floating away from the TARDIS in the gravity-less air. He felt the Doctor’s firm grip around his wrist and at its tug he let go of the light at the top of the police box and allowed the Doctor to pull him inside, where he thankfully collapsed onto the ground, which united with him eagerly. Or, rather, he collapsed on the Doctor-like impediment between himself and the floor, for the Doctor had toppled backwards as soon as his efforts had linked Kurt with gravity again.

“Okay, rule number one when it comes to space travel,” the Doctor said, his chest rumbling under Kurt as they remained on the ground, the Doctor’s arm wound around Kurt’s waist, holding him in place as though he were worried that Kurt would float away if he let go, “look before you leap.”

“Yeah,” Kurt breathed, pulling away gently. “Yeah, I knew that.” The Doctor, as though becoming aware of his grip, instantly slackened it and rose to his feet as soon as Kurt did, following him to the entry again.

Kurt’s hands still held the hourglass as he looked out into the vast expanse of . . . well, _nothing_ that he had fallen into. Where there ought to have been a bustling alien planet, there was simply the absence of one; where there ought to have been a sun or stars or even a moon or two, there was that simple yet complex opposite, comprised of an absence of moons, stars and sun. It was as though a veil of black had been cast over their eyes, but in a way that Kurt couldn’t find the words to explain. As though there wasn’t even _that_. There was just nothing, in its purest and simplest form.

“Doctor . . . what happened here?” Kurt whispered, surveying the scene with the first true thread of horror that he’d felt since meeting the man he was addressing. The man gave him no reply.

“Doctor?” Kurt muttered, slightly louder when the latter remained silence, thinking that perhaps the nothingness had so enraptured the man that he hadn’t heard Kurt speak. Kurt turned to look at his companion and, to his shock, found his face was ashen and his eyes were wide, as though he were being choked by a lack of air and pulled forward toward the open door by an invisible thread connected to his chest, controlled by some outside entity.

“Doctor!” Kurt yelled, the pace of his heart accelerating at the sight. He leapt forward to shake his Doctor, but the action elicited no response. In a flight of panic, Kurt pulled the Doctor away from the door before slamming it shut and bolting the lock for good measure, though there wasn’t anything visible to want to keep out.

He whirled around at the sound of the Doctor’s strangled gasp to see the Doctor down on one knee, hand pressed to his chest, heaving for the air that had, apparently, been unable to find its way into his lungs only moments before. What had been ashen grey then had now about it a strange, though fading, golden glow.

“Doctor, are you okay?” Kurt exclaimed, by his side in a flash. He fell to his knees before the Doctor and his hands flew to either side of the Doctor’s face before he could contemplate the reason for doing so.

The Time Lord coughed roughly, the glowing hand clutching at his chest clawing at the material of his shirt. “I think . . .” he said with difficulty, his free hand gripping Kurt’s shoulder. “Should be good, I think . . .” he repeated, a little more steadily this time.

“What happened?” Kurt inquired, his concern not fading.

The Doctor laughed weakly. “You asking about me or the planet?”

“You!” Kurt asserted, realizing that he couldn’t find it in himself to give a rat’s ass about what happened to the planet.

“Don’t know,” the Doctor muttered, gaze rising to his now dull hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “I . . . it felt like my very existence was being pulled from me, but . . .”

“Has it happened before?”

“I don’t—”

“Remember,” Kurt finished, his voice low and concerned. The Doctor nodded, seeming to match Kurt in his vague suspicion that it had.

“Okay . . . I think I can . . . I think I’m good,” the Doctor mumbled, leaning into Kurt heavily as he stood up. He exhaled and allowed the hand that had been pressed up to his chest to drop, though the other continued to hold Kurt by the shoulder. “So . . . planet.”

“Yeah,” Kurt said, realizing that he’d again forgotten about it.

“I literally have no idea,” the Doctor said, staring at the door with a mixed expression. “Planets don’t just disappear and if they do, they leave something behind, even if that something is just more of the surrounding space. . . . But to leave a timeless, pre-Biblical _nothing_ . . . it’s—”

“Impossible,” Kurt supplied solemnly.

“Yes, funny how impossible things keep happening around me,” the Doctor muttered drily, walking over to the abandoned hourglass on the floor.

“You think you’d get used to it,” Kurt tried to joke, but his voice had lost its humor as he contemplated the nothing that was beyond the thin, wooden door of the TARDIS, and the effect that it’d had on the Doctor.

“Seriously,” the Doctor said, crouching down and picking up the delicate instrument. “But do you know what concerns me for the moment?”

“What?”

The Doctor turned his body toward Kurt and held up the hourglass. “Someone made this and I’m guessing it was no one on that planet. So, who is in the business of making time pieces that count down to the impossible and why?”

Kurt’s eyes widened as he stared at the old timer that he’d been possessed to grab as they’d been leaving the planet. He’d never thought to consider the fact that someone had to have made the hourglass, had to have made it with such precise specifications that it not only timed, but measured the passage of time to a particular event. His mind raced as he watched the Doctor flip the hourglass over, but no crystals fell to the bottom as a result. But how and, indeed, why?

“You said that impossible things have a tendency of happening around you?” he murmured, struck by a sudden thought.

“Mmhmm,” the Doctor hummed, absorbed in scrutinizing the hourglass for signs of its maker.

“Maybe . . .” Kurt started to say, the idea gripping him in a sudden terror that he found himself praying would abandon him if he didn’t continue to voice it aloud.

The Doctor glanced up at the waver in Kurt’s voice. “Maybe what?”

“I . . . it just seems like a rather ingenious plan . . . to use a countdown to something impossible as a means of sending a sign or something to a man to whom impossible things have a tendency of becoming possible . . . or . . .”

The Doctor rose. “Or . . . ?” he repeated, looking as though he had a foreboding idea of what Kurt was thinking.

“Or . . . as a means of setting a trap for him,” Kurt finished softly.

“Or for you.”

Kurt started visibly at the simple statement uttered by the Doctor, whose thick, triangular brows were knitted as he watched Kurt with the same, calculating expression. “Me?” Kurt stammered, looking at the Doctor like he was awaiting the punch line of a joke. “Why would anyone set a trap for _me_?”

“I have no idea,” the Doctor admitted. “But I suggest it due to one factor. I wouldn’t have this,” he held up the still hourglass, “if you hadn’t thought to take it. Pretty lousy sign or trap if it can barely elicit my interest.”

Kurt swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet room. He couldn’t think of anything to say, having no questions, no answers, no brilliant insights into the workings of his own mind, no thoughts whatsoever except for the pressing one of why anyone might have thought an old hourglass might interest him and why, indeed, it had.

“Why did you take it?” the Doctor asked, as though reading Kurt’s mind, though he appeared to have gone back to looking for answers in the details of the hourglass.

Kurt blinked. “I . . . I’m not sure. I went over there because . . . I don’t know. I like watches and there wasn’t anyone there but . . . I don’t know. I guess if you’re going to be living on top of a ticking bomb, best not know when the clock will strike zero.”

The Doctor smiled to himself at this and looked like he was about to look up at Kurt when his eyes caught something on the hourglass and he breathed in softly. “Of course . . .”

Kurt lit up at the prospect of getting somewhere. “Of course, what?”

“What better person to make a clock counting down to future events than someone specifically trained to see them?” the Doctor replied smoothly, walking toward the console and launching the ship into flight.

“Where are we going?” Kurt inquired, picking up the hourglass and trying to locate what it had been that the Doctor had found.

“To see an old friend of mine,” the Doctor told him and as he did so, the TARDIS landed with a thump. The Doctor grabbed his jacket off the seats where he’d left it a seeming eternity ago. “Coming?” he inquired as he passed Kurt, who looked at him curiously for a moment before following.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he and the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS and he found himself face to face with a guard of about half a dozen men, their faces imposing and their guns pointed directly at the two of them. Kurt took a panicked step backward, but the Doctor looked relatively unfazed.

“Identify yourself!”

The Doctor clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Rather a pointless command, for if your queen is as talented as I know she is, then you already know who I am and she is expecting me. So, better not tarry.” He swept past the sea of guns without another care. “C’mon, Kurt! One does not keep royalty waiting,” he called back and Kurt carefully detached himself from the protective blue box and dashed quickly past the rather befuddled-looking guards.

He didn’t say anything until he got close enough to murmur, “Doctor, where are we?”

“Geographically, we’re right about where Cardiff once was. Temporally, several thousands of years into your future. This is where seers are trained.”

“You mean people who can see the future? I didn’t know that was something you could be trained in.”

“You can’t really. They take the talented, bring them here and train them to see and read the future properly,” the Doctor said, rounding a corner and going through a stately-looking door.

The room that Kurt followed him into was large and round, empty but for a velvet-trimmed, throne-like chair at one end, across from which there was a window that spanned a quarter of the surrounding wall, overlooking vast expanses of stars and what had to be the remainder of the space station. Behind the throne there were floor-to-ceiling curtains of the same material as that which lined the throne and in the very center of the room was an odd contraption, like a round table of the knights of old, but solid except for a bowl-like cut into the top of it, over which hovered an intricate collection of twinkling lights, solid spheres and wispy clouds of dust. Bent over it was the most stunning woman that Kurt had ever seen.

“You surprise me, Awena,” the Doctor said sternly, walking toward her. “I’m not usually greeted like the enemy when I arrive.”

She looked up from what she had been studying, but rather than looking at the Doctor, her black eyes fixed on Kurt. “Times are uncertain, Doctor,” she said slowly as she straightened, her gaze never leaving Kurt as though he were the one she was most eager to see arrive. “The last of the ancient planets has dropped. It won’t be long now. Welcome, Kurt Hummel,” she said, addressing him for the first time. “Your coming has long been awaited.”

Kurt didn’t answer, wrenching his gaze away from her to the Doctor, who was observing her with an expression that Kurt was unable to decipher, but that he didn’t like.

“Your people made this?” the Doctor said, placing the hourglass on the solid space before her. She turned her gaze downward and smiled fondly.

“They did.”

“To bring me here? Because the planets are vanishing?”

“Hmm. Yes, you too,” she replied, looking up at Kurt again as she spoke. “But I told you, Doctor, when you were here last, that the universe didn’t need your heroisms and healing but . . . oh, but you don’t remember, do you?” she murmured when the Doctor gave her a look of surprise. “It draws on memory, that strange phenomenon that is taking matter and erasing it from existence. How long did it come in contact with you when your incredible survival instincts kicked in and you ran as only Time Lords know how?”

Kurt gasped and looked over at the Doctor, whose eyes had widened and who had stepped back a pace, his arm rising on its own accord not to the pocket watch in his blazer, but to the center of his chest, to press firmly there. “Doctor?” Kurt whispered. He was aware of the smallest movement on his right by Awena at the sound of his voice, but he ignored it.

The Doctor didn’t respond, his hand still pressed to his chest as though he were taken with a sudden pain there. “I . . .” he murmured, his eyes flashing pain, like a wave that suddenly swept him up in all the things he’d forgotten. He looked at Kurt. “I remember. It was . . . it was like in the TARDIS before, at Celladûr. I . . . I could feel it fading . . . my existence, my memory, my heart and I . . . I tried to regenerate, but I _couldn’t_ and then I . . . I . . .”

“Ran,” Awena finished, her voice almost accusatory, as though the Doctor had done something forbidden, but expected.

Kurt inhaled and started forward, the pain of memory in the Doctor’s expression crushing something inside his heart, but at that moment something sparked in the diagram in the center of the room and Kurt’s gaze was drawn to it.

The Doctor’s eyes flashed as he looked from it to Awena, who continued to watch Kurt intently. “They’ve been disappearing in order of creation, haven’t they?”

“They have. And the process was slow, as creation had been, confined to the power of the ancient suns, but they’ve all fallen now and the wave will hit like a storm,” Awena replied, walking closer to where Kurt found himself engrossed in the wave of darkness that was flowing slowly through the miniature stars.

“And there’s nothing to be done?” Kurt murmured, brokenhearted, almost to himself. Is that where life would finally end—at that space of nothingness that he had almost been swallowed up by?

“I only said there was nothing that _he_ could do.” The inflection made Kurt look up to find her staring at him almost hungrily, in a way that seemed to clout her beauty. No matter her relations with the Doctor, the look unnerved him and he took a small step backward.

“Me?” he said softly, laughing quietly at the absurdity of the belief.

Her eyes widened, almost gleefully at his words. “Oh, but you don’t know. The pair of you don’t know who you are . . . what you are. Extraordinary.”

“No, but her words coming back to me, I can hazard a guess. You, on the other hand. . . .”

Awena looked up, startled, as though she had forgotten the Doctor was present, and her quickly roving eyes found him not near the diorama, where she and Kurt were, but rather near her throne, his back to them and his fingers delicately playing with the curtain. Kurt had the sudden, absurd thought that this was not the time to be fussing about the space station’s interior decorating.

“Whatever do you mean, ‘me,’ Doctor?”

“I mean . . . Only that I warned her not to meddle with the crack and, if she had to, for it to be only to counter the fate she saw in it. But then, she was never one to fight fate,” the Doctor muttered thoughtfully.

Kurt raised his eyebrows while the woman next to him laughed merrily, presumably at the absurdity of being referred to in the past tense and in the third person. “Doctor, you speak more nonsense than you usually do.”

“On the contrary,” the Doctor replied, turning to look at her, the hardness sin his eyes causing Kurt to double take. “Nonsensical though I may be, I never waste my time on—”

The end of his sentence was cut off sharply by a strangled gasp, the same as had seized him in the light of the missing planet and he stumbled backward, his hand flying up to the space of his chest directly between his two hearts, as though he were trying to prevent something from escaping him.

“Doctor!” Kurt exclaimed, his heart again seizing in horror as the Doctor fell to one knee. He started flying forward to the Time Lord and he felt Awena’s fingers grazing his wrist in an attempt to stop him, but he was too fast for her and in an instant he was by the Doctor’s side, collapsing down onto his knees in a manner far to reminiscent of when the same thing had happened to them in the TARDIS. The déjà vu of the moment gave him hope, for the claw that had seized at the Doctor then had gone almost as soon as it came, so surely it must do so this time. His hand gripped the Doctor’s shoulder tightly. “Doctor?” he whispered, but the Doctor shook his head, opening his mouth to speak but only gasping for breath.

Kurt exhaled, utterly helpless, when he felt a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Time is fleeting, Kurt Hummel. We must work quickly.”  



	9. Had We but World Enough, and Time

Kurt swallowed and looked up to find her eyes piercing through his fear for the Doctor in a rather disconcerting way. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“The universe is dying and the Doctor is both a cause and an effect.”

“What do you mean?” Kurt asked, his eyes wide but his voice testy. The Doctor gripped his arm tighter and he looked down to see the Doctor shaking his head at him, mouth in a tight line.

Awena squeezed his shoulder. “The universe is dying and it takes all the living with it, starting from the oldest of planets—language, time, light. It wants to take him because he is ancient and he is timeless, intricately connected with it in a way that no other living creature is, and the only way you can save him is to give to the universe a new will to live—reboot the systems, so to say.”

“Kurt!” the Doctor gasped out and Kurt’s gaze flickered to him desperately, but it was as though it had taken all his strength just to utter the boy’s name.

“I don’t,” he whispered helplessly, “I don’t know what you want me to do.” He looked up at Awena. “And I don’t understand why it has to be me.”

“Do you know how time passes for a broken watch, Kurt Hummel?” she inquired in return.

“What? I . . . Will you stop with the fucking riddles already while he’s _dying_?” Kurt exploded, his head and his heart pounding and his frustrations at never being given a straight answer finally overpowering him.

“It doesn’t,” she said, answering her own question and Kurt stopped shouting long enough to look at her incredulously. “It remains fixed, the time after its breaking fleeing past, yet unaffecting it, as though it is indifferent to the universe and the universe is indifferent to it. As though it is content that it remains forever as it is. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” she murmured, taking in his wide eyes.

Did it, indeed. Kurt was jolted back for a moment through a space of conscious memory. From a small boy to a young man, he was somehow always acutely aware of the way in which time was flowing, the way it flowed by him like he was a rock in a stream, while everyone else was a fish swimming merrily onward with it. And then there was that moment on the Dalton stairs that day in November when it seemed to stop and never continue, though the days kept passing and the clocks kept ticking.

“What does that have to do with me?” he whispered, feeling the two pairs of eyes in the room fixed on him intensely.

“Your Doctor would tell you that time can be rewritten, but that there are fixed points in the time stream that always occur precisely when and how they are meant to. What also exists, however, is the possibility of a fixed _person_. One that may not die and, after a point, will have existed always.

_Logically, you weren’t here before you were, but then you were always here, even before you were. Curious._

“You were brought here, Kurt Hummel, because the universe was dying. Is dying. Because you are a fixed point of energy, never fading and never wavering, growing pure and light as your soul has always been, even in the darkest of moments,” Awena said with a soft, admiring smile on her face. “It is enough to power the universe until the end of time.”

Kurt’s eyes were so wide he almost thought he’d never be able to shut them again. Him, such a grandiose reservoir of energy? It couldn’t be true. He was just Kurt. Kurt Hummel from Lima, Ohio, who from his first day of high school was attacked by slushies and tossed into dumpsters and whose only redeeming days had been in glee club and in a future that hadn’t occurred yet when he would finally escape to New York and stardom. It wasn’t possible for him to be any more than that, any more than he was. And yet there he was, far further than any of them would ever go in their lifetimes, even if their lifetimes hadn’t been under the threat of being swept away at the blink of an eye at any second.

His gaze fell down onto his Doctor, who clutched his chest and looked at Kurt with an imploring desperation. His Doctor, who had bounded into his life wearing a different face when Kurt had lost one of the most important people in his existence. Who had found him again, however accidentally, when he had been bogged down with sorrows that no one else had bothered to take notice of. His Doctor, who had shown him the stars and music and, somewhere along the way, the contents of his own heart.

“What do I have to do?” he said finally, looking back up at her.

The Doctor’s hand gripped his arm painfully.

Her eyes lit up gleefully and she turned to her model. “This was designed long ago to observe the turns of the universe and, when our futures were foretold, it was modified when they foretold of your coming. Its alterations were designed in a way that would channel energy from one source to another, like a battery,” she explained, gesturing toward it until he stood up slowly with a murmur to the Doctor and took a couple of steps toward it. “The model doesn’t just represent the universe; it is intricately tied to it. You could see it in the disappearances of the planets when you came here.” Kurt nodded, gazing at the panels surrounding the intricate woodwork of the diorama, his hand stretching out toward them carefully. “And—”

“Kurt!” the Doctor exclaimed loudly, gasping for breath. “Kurt, _don’t_!”

Kurt started and his gaze rose to meet the Doctor’s in surprise. That desperation was still there, but Kurt hadn’t realized it wasn’t an urge to keep going; it was a plea to stop.

“But . . .” he murmured, confused. “Why?”

The Doctor shook his head, his inhales ragged, looking as if the volume he’d put into the outburst had taken what little wind and energy he’d been able to muster. “She’s not . . . She’s not who she says she is.”  
Kurt inhaled sharply and he looked at the woman they’d taken to be the Doctor’s friend. Her face had a sour look on it. “How do you know?”

“If there was . . . one thing . . .” the Doctor said with difficulty, his hand clutching at his chest, his narrowed gaze on her, “that Awena and I . . . disagreed upon . . . it was . . . she didn’t believe . . . . in changing one’s fate, no matter . . . no matter how unpleasant. . . . She would never . . . sacrifice you . . . to change fate, any fate.”

“Sacrifice me?” Kurt exclaimed, taking a quick step back from the machine.

He was ignored and for the first time that night, all attention was focused on the Doctor. “Well, Doctor, aren’t you a clever one. I underestimated you.”

“Who are you, then?” Kurt asked, heart pounding as he put still more distance between himself and the strange woman.

“She—” the Doctor started, but she cut him off.

“Save your breath while you can,” she instructed. The Doctor looked as though he wished to protest, but he was seized by another lack of air and fell silent, though his distrustful gaze still rested upon her. She turned to Kurt. “This space station rests where Cardiff used to be when the Earth was still in existence. Its placement wasn’t arbitrary. It was based on the fact that Cardiff had existed over a rift in the universe, a rift that was a major source of energy, which was used to train seers, to expand their powers. The rift could also be used as a portal between this universe and alternate ones. That’s all I am. I am her from the other side of that rift.”

“What happened to her?” Kurt asked suspiciously.

The false seer’s face hardened at the question. “She met her fate.” When Kurt did not reply, circling the diorama until he was once again brought to the side where the Doctor had collapsed, as far away as he could get from the mysterious woman. “You don’t trust me, Kurt, but I ask you to acknowledge one thing to me.” He narrowed his eyes. “Look at your Doctor and see if he disputes any of the things that I’ve said to you. If he denies that you are who I tell you you are. If he denies that you have the power of saving this universe.”

Kurt inhaled softly, his eyes flickering doubtfully between the diorama and her face, his mouth set in a straight line until he finally turned his head to glance back at the Doctor who was looking at the false seer with hatred etched into his every feature, as if he would have liked perfectly to contradict her, but could not.

“No matter who I am, Kurt Hummel,” she continued, a small, victorious thread wound through her voice, “we are still in the same place we’ve been at all this while. And time is running out. And all the while your Doctor is losing the strength he needs to stay alive, to keep this universe alive.”

Kurt swallowed, something pulling him toward the machine again until he heard his name yelled out again.

“Kurt, _no_!”

“But if it can save you!” Kurt protested, turning his back on the sharp-eyed seer. “If I can save it—”

“Kurt, it will kill you!” the Doctor gasped out, struck by another invisible blow.

“Nonsense,” said the voice behind him with a scoff, but Kurt didn’t acknowledge it. “You are a fixed figure. Your Doctor has come across one before and is well aware that you cannot die.”

“No, she’s right,” the Doctor said, his voice quiet and weak. He spoke slowly, as though he were losing energy. “I met a fixed man before, but he didn’t come to be so naturally. And every time they tried to kill him, he could come back to life. But . . .” he gave a ragged inhale and Kurt took a step forward out of concern, his eyes wet with tears, “But if you let yourself be hooked up to that machine it will kill you. Constantly and over centuries it will drain the very energy out of you to sustain every living thing, at best, if this universe is to be kept alive. At worst, God knows what that energy could be harvested for. But it will kill you and when you come to it will do it again, and again, and again. And you will be aware of it at every instance.”

Kurt blinked back tears. It was no existence, to live to die over and over again and the thought of such a life, with no way of running, cut him to his very core and threatened to swallow him whole. But then he looked down at the man begging him to run and he remembered how, when he had been younger, that same man had told him never to run away. And he didn’t think his heart, torn to pieces as it was, could handle a long sprint.

“But if I could save you—”

The laugh the Doctor let out was like a strangled cough and it made Kurt choke back his words in anguish. “Me, who am I, Kurt, but another old man whose death is long overdue? I have seen far, far too much in this universe and have escaped death one too many times. You, on the other hand . . .” his voice was thick and the expression on his face was one Kurt had never seen before.  
He was jerked back by the voice of their false seer, who sounded untouched by the moment between the two of them. “And what do you think will happen to him, Doctor, when he walks away? The universe will collapse onto itself and he will be gone, more so than he would be if he did what he came here to do.”

The Doctor shook his head imploringly, his face pale but for the mist-like glow that could fade in and out as though trying to work some healing power, but failing. “There are other . . . other universes. Right behind that curtain. When this one comes to an end, the rift will close. Let it go, Kurt. You have so much left to live for and I can’t let another person die for me. Not anymore. Not this time.”

“I can’t leave you!” Kurt sobbed, fisting his hand against his mouth.

“Kurt, not to be dramatic, but . . . you hook yourself up to that machine . . . it would . . . it would break my heart.”

Kurt inhaled and looked back toward the model of the universe, attempting to bite back tears but feeling them carving hot rivers over the hills of his cheekbones all the same. He watched the slow blanket of darkness falling, with less haste than a moment before, but with no sense of stopping all the same. What choice did it offer him? The choice to be the source of power and perish continuously for all eternity, or to escape into an alternate reality and let the disappearances of all rest on his shoulders? Either way there seemed no solution to be had, no reality where it would be Kurt and the Doctor traveling in the TARDIS, visiting planets or sprinting gaily away from alien armies. _We are doomed whichever way we turn; we are given no right choice._

“Kurt,” came the stern voice of the seer again, but he didn’t hear it over a sudden memory, his eyes widening at the notion of choices. She had mentioned it to him, the impossible choice, like an instruction that did not instruct in the slightest, but at her words echoing through his memory, his mouth dropped open and he blindly made a choice, though he had no idea what would come of it.

“I’ll do it. I’ll save it.”

“Kurt, no!”

Kurt whirled around at the violence in the Doctor’s shout, inhaling shakily but no longer crying. Behind him, the false Awena looked triumphant and he didn’t want to contemplate whatever ulterior motives she had. He kept his back turned on her and walked toward the Doctor.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her smile fading.

“I need a minute—”

“You don’t have—”

Kurt spun around midstride, his eyes narrowed and his voice harsh. “If I don’t convince him he’ll try to stop me and I’ve never seen him fail when he’s put his mind to something.”

She pursed her lips, looking displeased, but nodded. Kurt turned back toward the Doctor and dropped down to his knees until they were face to face.

“My Doctor,” he murmured, his voice rough but steady. The Doctor’s face was scrunched up with pain, but it looked like the pain of losing a part of oneself that was desperately being held back. He was almost doubled over his knee, but looked up to meet Kurt’s gaze. He didn’t look disappointed, but rather pained, as though all that he cared for was slipping through his fingers like the lives of all that he’d loved and lost.

“Kurt . . .” he breathed, the name barely coming out as a whisper, not because he had secrets, but because he simply lacked the strength for more. “You can’t . . .”

“I’ll be the first to admit that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, but I’m going to ask you to please, please trust me,” Kurt murmured, running his hand along the inside of the Doctor’s jacket.

“Kurt . . .”

“Please . . . I’ve trusted you all this time and I need you to trust me,” Kurt said, taking both of his free hands and pressing them to the Doctor’s ghost-like cheeks. “Promise me something?”

“Kurt, don’t do this . . .”

“Promise me that you’ll come back for me. That no matter where we end up when this is all over, you’ll find me again.”

“Kurt, if you do this . . . I . . . I can’t save you.”

“Promise me,” Kurt insisted in a whisper and the Doctor looked at him with all the sorrows of the universe painted in his eyes. With immense difficulty, he nodded, though the nod was stilted, like he knew that he was making a promise he could never keep.  
Kurt smiled, something in the promise making him feel stronger. He didn’t, however, move to get up from his kneeling position. Instead, he pressed the glow of his hands further against the Doctor’s cheeks and leaned in. “Just trust me,” he murmured before closing his eyes and pressing his lips to the cool, fading skin of the Doctor’s.

After that moment, he didn’t see anything. He only felt the Doctor’s startled gasp against his lips, felt the increased warmth from the very tips of his fingers, heard a woman’s angry exclamation behind him, sensed the warm glow of smoke on the outsides of his eyelids before it faded away, along with all his other senses, leaving the world black.  



	10. Epilogue—Come With Me, Go Places

_November 4, 2015_  
New York City, New York

“You suck, you know that?” Rachel declared, dropping her bag onto a plush window seat in the intercity Starbucks and marched off to acquire herself some coffee, though it seemed fairly certain that she did not need anymore.

Kurt snorted to himself in amusement and continued to glide his highlighter carefully over various locations and times for play auditions in the NYADA newsletter. He waited until his friend had flopped down in the armchair across from his before replying,

“Are you aware of the extent to which you behave as a broken record?”

“Stop looking exactly the same as you did when you were seventeen and then maybe we’ll talk.”

“Oh, yeah, Rachel, because at 21 you look absolutely _ancient_. God, you’ll never get those young roles now. Best accept the fact that the only part you’ll ever play is that of someone’s grandmother,” Kurt drawled sarcastically, settling back against the old leather of his armchair. “Just be grateful that you’re not constantly carded when you go to clubs.”

Rachel let out another huff of annoyance, for lack of anything more to say, and buried herself in stacks of potential audition sheet music.

His concentration broken, Kurt laid the newsletter down on his lap and shifted his position with a small, victorious smirk. He rested his booted feet on the windowsill, looking out on the busy New York street, allowing the warm sunlight to filter in through the window and warm the sleek curves of his cheekbones. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the smell of coffee engulfing him, the light, heart-beat-like pulse of his pocket watch warm and ever present in the confines of his vest, pressed against his heart.

The smile was partially at her jealousy (one of the main highlights for him in their relationship was his ability to send her into a jealous rage over anything). It was partially at the thought of what her reaction might be if she ever knew the fact that he might always look the way he did at seventeen. It was a strange, vague notion that he’d had since junior year when Mr. Schuester had announced their sectionals competition, when time had felt like it should have diverged from true events, but never quite actually did so. He felt as tough he should be feeling an odd, constant feeling of anxiety about the fact, as though waiting for the catalysis of the divergent of two existent timelines. He didn’t though, really.

But he did feel like he was waiting. But it wasn’t consciously and it was with an impossible sense of calm, supported by the warm weight of the pocket watch that he’d had for as long as he could remember. The little pocket watch that couldn’t actually tell time.

He opened his eyes a moment later, blinking against the harshness of sunlight, glittering against the dust in the air. He smiled suddenly, catching the eye of a man that had been busy perusing the menu hung outside the window. As soon as their eyes met, the man’s crinkled up into a smile and he winked, disappearing out of the frame of the street-facing window. Kurt was flooded with relief at the tension in his shoulders that hadn’t even made itself present to him until it was gone.

He sat up instantly in his chair and flipped the pages of the newsletter closed, sliding it and his highlighter and pens swiftly into his messenger bag.

“Where are you going?” Rachel demanded, head flying up from where it had been bent over scores. “You were supposed to help me pick an audition song!”

Kurt grinned, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “Anything you sing will be fantastic and you know it,” he replied cheerfully and squeezed past her out of the coffee shop, ignoring her yelling and grinning cheekily at her wild gestures as he passed the window.

The streets were full of people, but the object of Kurt’s interest was no longer anywhere in sight. But that feeling was present again, that warm glow about his heart and he couldn’t bring himself to feel agitated. He walked with a purpose, not even sure of where he was going, but knowing instinctively which turn would lead him to the object of his pursuit.

He finally turned into a street adjacent to Central Park, one in aesthetic features almost similar to a British residential lane. All he had to do was take one look at the rows of buildings and he knew, even before he saw the blue police box at the far corner and its ancient owner leaning casually against it, grinning cheekily.

Kurt mirrored the grin and though each inch of his body was suddenly inclined to surge forward, he flicked his hair out of his eyes with every air of coolness and walked forward slowly. Only those who would have gotten close enough to see the passionate blaze in his eye would have known him to be something other than a regular New Yorker on his daily route.

“My dear Doctor, what the hell have you got on your head?” Kurt called out cheerfully when he got close enough.

The Doctor’s brow furrowed and he adjusted the hat he was wearing. “It’s a fedora,” he called back, looking slightly defensive. “I wear Fedoras now. Fedoras are cool.” The pride in his voice almost cracked Kurt’s cool façade.

“Well, your fashion taste has certain changed for the better, though once you hit that awful blazer I suppose the only direction to go is up,” Kurt commented, coming to a stop. “Nice bowtie.”

“Bowties are cool, too.”

“Did I ever say anything to the contrary?” Kurt replied swiftly and, as though one entity, they broke out into identical grins, fuller still than the ones they’d first had when they’d spotted one another, their joy practically radiating sunshine. They stared at each other for a beat before Kurt lost any sense of self control and launched himself at the Doctor in an embrace that nearly knocked him over.

“I can’t believe you remembered me,” the Doctor murmured softly as Kurt buried his grin in the Doctor’s shoulder. “You never cease to amaze me.”

“Of course I did!” Kurt replied, pulling back and looking into his Doctor’s eyes.

“Well, technically you never met me, did you?” the Doctor shrugged. “Not this version, anyway.”

“Yeah . . .” Kurt murmured, tilting his head. “Explain to me what happened?”

“I thought it was obviously, Kurt Hummel, savior of the universe.”

“Doctor.”

“Fine, fine. Essentially, time got reversed to the point at which the universe started dying to ensure that everything was put back the way it was meant to be.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, growing seriously, because it had felt like a dream he’d had and he’d thought about it periodically and had never been able to figure it out. “You know what I mean, though? Why did everything resolve itself the way it did?”

The Doctor chuckled and ran a hand through his hair and that was the first moment that Kurt actually paused to take in his full appearance. The old Dalton uniform had been discarded and replaced by a black polo, red pants, a bowtie and the fedora that had been knocked off his head, revealing hair that, while still gelled, curled thickly instead of being plastered to his head.

And then there was the twinkle in his eye, a natural sunshine that hadn’t been there before, but that seemed like such an integral part of the Doctor that Kurt was almost bothered by the fact that its absence was never noticed.

“Honestly, I can’t pretend to fully understand it, because there’s something about being at the center of events that yields less certainty than standing at the perimeter,” the Doctor admitted, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “But as far as I can understand it, piecing it together from hints and whispers, the universe intricately connects itself to the oldest beings in creation, whether they be stars or planets or living creatures.”

“You’re not that old, though,” Kurt interrupted, his brow furrowing.

“Well, thanks.”

“I mean comparatively, of course.”

“Oh, _of course_ ,” the Doctor repeated cheekily. “But my people are some of the oldest in creation and I’m the last one left. So somewhere along the way, we became paradoxically linked.”

“Paradoxically in that you could save both by saving one, but none if you saved the other?” Kurt asked.

“I suppose. You, though . . . sometimes I fail to understand how you fit in. A fixed point in time and space, just becoming so on its own accord. The fact that you always seemed to be there. why falling in love with you would be the thing that was supposed to save me.”

Kurt inhaled sharply, his eyes widening as though he seriously hadn’t considered the possibility.

“Don’t you look like that, like you didn’t know,” the Doctor laughed. “Granted, I didn’t know until I was willing to die so that you wouldn’t have to spend all eternity attached to that machine. Because, hero that people might call me,” he murmured almost bitterly to himself, “I’d let so many people die for me. But you . . . I thought that letting you sacrifice yourself for me like that would have killed me anyway. I thought . . . before I met you I lost someone incredibly special to me, someone that I had really never expected to and . . . I’ve had a long, hard life. Begin the last of the Time Lords is like a curse, confining you to meeting people only to lose them and River . . . River seemed like the final straw. But then you came along and you warmed my spirit and I just . . . losing you would have just torn everything to shreds, so . . .” he paused, his eyes widening, as though he’d spoken words he’d never considered before, though logically they seemed completely obvious. “But _you_. You _knew_ , which is why you made the choice you did. How?”

Kurt opened his mouth, but closed it before saying anything. A moment later he spoke. “She hinted actually. Your TARDIS,” he said, glancing at the majestic blue box. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what to do, you know. But something she said in all her hints and all her riddles and some part of me . . . took a guess, took a chance and hoped that it was the right one.” He shrugged, glancing down at his shoes before looking back up. “And it’s funny because when everything restarted itself, I had this sense of a whole other lifetime and I felt that if I just waited long enough, it would eventually catch up with me.”

“Oh, yeah?” the Doctor inquired, raising an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling playfully. “You were so sure that I would come that you didn’t even bother reenacting romantic comedy montages of waiting at the place and on the date that you ran into my other regenerations? You were _that_ sure I would come looking for you?”

“Yup,” Kurt smiled, winking. “Guess I know you better than you know yourself, huh?”

The Doctor snorted and took as step forward until they were almost nose to nose. Kurt inhaled and stiffened when he felt the Doctor’s fingers against his side. “What’re you—”

“So you _stealing_ my hobb watch did absolutely nothing to boost your confidence?” the Doctor interrupted, grinning mischievously as he dangled the pocket watch that he had somehow recovered from Kurt’s pocket. “You were very subtle about it, by the way. I was impressed.”

“It may have factored in somewhat, yeah,” Kurt smirked as the pocket watch, after one final swing on the wind between them, ended up in the Doctor’s pocket where it rightly belonged. Kurt continued to look at the Doctor, at the crinkles of laughter in the corners of his eyes, at the glow in them.

“You look younger.”

The Doctor smiled, his face lighting up affectionately in the warm stream of fall sunlight. “You haven’t aged a day since I met you,” was his soft reply.

“And my friends never let me forget it. The perks of being a ‘fixed figure,’ eh?” Kurt laughed.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, his amusement stalled as though he’d gotten a sudden, spur-of-the-moment idea, though the everlasting twinkle in his eye implied that whatever he was about to utter had been at the forefront of his mind for quite some time.  
“I can name some other benefits.”

Kurt’s eyes widened and he leaned in to murmur in a whisper, “Is that supposed to sound dirty, Time Lord?”  
The Doctor smirked and leaned in further still, his breath glossing over Kurt’s ear. “If you want. But it’s not entirely what I had in mind. All of time and space I once offered you, Kurt Hummel, with your morality at the very back of my mind. I offer it to you now with no restrictions. Every century, every planet and the both of us able to spend unlimited time to experience it. What do you say . . . Kurt?”

Kurt held his breath at the closeness of the Time Lord, his eyes trained on the blue of the police box, the prospects, unconsidered up until that point, making his soul tingle.

“Do you honestly think I would ever turn you down?” he breathed out.

He could feel the Doctor’s smile, somehow, and when they separated the Doctor simultaneously laid one hand on the TARDIS door to open it and the other intertwined with Kurt’s.

“Let’s go, then,” he replied, his eyes glowing with affection, as he started backing into the magical box.

“Where?” Kurt inquired.

The Doctor pulled a face of mock concentration. He stepped out of the TARDIS and, winding an arm around Kurt’s waist, pulled him closer until their sides were flush against each other and their cheeks almost touched as they both directed their gazes toward the sky.

“How about . . . there?” The Doctor’s hand picked an arbitrary spot on the cloudless sky.

“Perfect.”


End file.
